Tawny Cypress
Tawny Cypress is an actor, born 1976.
Tawny Cypress was born in Point Pleasant, New Jersey in 1976, came up through stage work, and got her first large television audience as the art dealer Simone Deveaux on Heroes.
What followed is a career pattern worth naming, because plenty of good actors have it and almost nobody writes about it. She kept landing significant roles in network dramas that did not last: Anna Rowe in Hack, Cassandra in 100 Centre Street, Jonny Zero, Ginger 'Love Tap' LeBeau in K-Ville, Nez Rowan in The Blacklist: Redemption, Colonel Edina Corpus in The Code, Naia in Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector, and Cherie Rollins-Murray in the second and third seasons of Unforgettable. Her work as Carly Heath in House of Cards and as Inez in Inez & Doug & Kira is not among the credits listed here.
Yellowjackets is the one that finally gave her the room. Taissa Turner is played across the show's two timelines, a woman running for office with a past she will not discuss, and Cypress does the hardest version of that performance: composed in public, unravelling in private, with no visible seam between the two.
Her film work is smaller and mostly New York: World Trade Center, Brooklyn's Finest, Autumn in New York, Bella.
Movies (4)
TV (10)
Where to start with Tawny Cypress
Yellowjackets is the reason to be on this page, and there is no reason to work up to it. Taissa is the most demanding role she has been given and the one that uses everything she can do, particularly the control she keeps in scenes where the character is very obviously not in control.
Heroes is worth a first season for the nostalgia and for seeing what a hit felt like in 2006, though be warned that the show comes apart afterwards. K-Ville is the interesting failure, a post-Katrina New Orleans cop drama with a genuinely good idea behind it, and Unforgettable is the most conventional procedural of the set.
On film, Brooklyn's Finest is the strongest showcase, a bleak ensemble crime picture that gives its supporting cast real scenes to play.