Lisa Bonet was born in San Francisco to an African-American father and a Jewish-American mother.  She began acting at age 11, and became most famous for her role as Denise Huxtable on The Cosby Show beginning in 1984.  She also starred in the somewhat controversial Angel Heart with Mickey Rourke in 1987.  She was married to musician Lenny Kravitz from 1988 to 1993, and they had a daughter.

So, what's up with the pipe?  Some people are so eager to point to certain celebrities as pipe smokers that they will jump at the chance to call anyone a pipe smoker who pops a stem in his/her mouth.

I must remain skeptical in this instance as to the question of her pipe smoking status, for these reasons:

1.  There is no smoke rising from the bowl of the pipe.
2.  The angle of the photo makes it impossible to see if the pipe is loaded or not.
3.  If this meerschaum pipe has ever been smoked at all, it could not have been smoked very much, because it shows absolutely no coloration.

Still, this is probably the only legitimate reason I'll ever have to post a photo of Lisa Bonet on my blog, so carpe diem.

Archie Shepp was born in Florida and raised in Philadelphia, where he studied piano, clarinet, and alto sax while he was growing up.  He went to Goddard College in New York to study drama, but was unsuccessful as an actor so he turned to music professionally, focusing on the tenor sax, piano, and vocals.

His music career began when pianist Cecil Taylor invited him to join his group in 1960.  He later went on to collaborate with saxophonist John Coltrane and other pioneering jazz musicians.

Shepp, along with Taylor, was one of the first musicians to seriously explore "free jazz."  He is also completely fluent in traditional jazz, spirituals, and the blues.


Archie Shepp currently lives in Massachusetts, where he is a professor of music history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Brett was the British actor probably most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.  He trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.  He made his first (although uncredited) appearance on film in 1954, and on stage in 1956.  He played many classical and Shakespearean roles on stage, and a wide variety of roles on film.

He auditioned for the role of James Bond twice, but lost both times to George Lazenby and Roger Moore.

His singing in My Fair Lady was overdubbed, although he was actually a very good singer.

He was married to actress Anna Massey during 1958-62 (after which they divorced), and they had one son in 1959, David Huggins.  He is now a cartoonist and novelist.

Brett remarried in 1976 to Joan Wilson, an American producer for PBS.  She died of cancer in 1985, and he was devastated by the loss.  His health began to decline and he never recovered from it.  He never remarried again.

Brett was a very heavy cigarette smoker, but he also took up the pipe after being cast as Sherlock Holmes.  He based his portrayal of Holmes on the original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, rather than on previous portrayals by other actors (which is what just about every other actor seems to have done).  An obvious difference is the pipes he used as Holmes.  They are both historically accurate and in line with the descriptions given in the stories--not a single calabash to be seen.

Jeremy Brett suffered from bipolar disorder, which worsened after Joan Wilson's death.  He died of heart failure in 1995, probably brought on not only by his heavy cigarette smoking, but also by the medication he had to take to control his bipolar disorder and by a case of rheumatic fever he had when he was 16.