Background
Dandridge was born in Okinawa, Japan. Her father was an African-American United States serviceman from Memphis and her mother was a local Okinawan of Korean and Japanese descent.
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Merle Dandridge
Edit ProfileCareer
She performed in a number of stage productions, include Broadway musicals Jesus Christ Superstar, Spamalot, and Rent. Dandridge also known for her recurring role on television series such as Sons of Anarchy and The Night Shift. In 2015, she began starring as Grace Greenleaf in the upcoming Oprah Winfrey Network drama series, Greenleaf.
As well as Okinawa, Dandridge has lived in Sacramento, California, at Beale Air Force Base, and later at Offutt Air Force Base (home to the then-Strategic Air Command) in Bellevue, Nebraska, where she spent the majority of her childhood.
She attended Papillion Louisiana Vista High School and participated in the play production class and theater department there. She then attended the Conservatory at Roosevelt University (currently called the Chicago College of Performing Arts) with a scholarship that she earned at the International Thespian Festival.
Dandridge began her career appearing in Chicago theatre productions. She has gained a wider audience as the voice of Alyx Vance in the award-winning action game Half-Life 2 and its sequels, Episode One and Episode Two, and also as Marlene in The Last of United States
On television, she guest starred on NCIS, 24, Criminal Minds, The Newsroom and Drop Dead Diva.
Dandridge also had the recurring roles in the Forex drama series, Sons of Anarchy as Rita Roosevelt, and short-lived The CW teen soap Star-Crossed in 2014. In 2015, she co-starred in the second season of National Broadcasting Company medical drama, The Night Shift as Gwen Gaskin. In 2015, Dandridge was cast as one of leads in the Oprah Winfrey Network drama series, Greenleaf opposite Lynn Whitfield.
She plays the role of Grace Greenleaf, Greenleaf"s estranged daughter.
