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Early life

Pounder was born in Georgetown, Guyana, the daughter of Betsy Enid Arnella (née James) and Ronald Urlington Pounder. She was educated in England and moved to the U.S. in 1970. Pounder made her acting debut in the 1979 film All That Jazz.

Career

Pounder starred in the film Bagdad Café (a role played by Whoopi Goldberg in a short-lived television sitcom). Pounder has made smaller appearances in many other successful films. She has focused primarily on her television career. In the early 1980s, Pounder first appeared in guest roles on Hill Street Blues, and then on several other popular shows (Miami Vice, L.A. Law, The X-Files, Living Single and Quantum Leap) before landing a long-running recurring role as Dr. Angela Hicks on ER from 1994 to 1997. She then returned to guest appearances on other shows, including The Practice, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Millennium, The West Wing (where she was considered for a lead role) and the short-lived sitcom Women in Prison.

Since 2002, she has starred as Detective Claudette Wyms in the FX Networks police drama The Shield. For this role she was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in 2005. She had previously been nominated for Emmys in 1995 (for guest starring in The X-Files) and in 1997 (for her supporting role on ER). She has also lent her voice to several video games and animated projects, including Aladdin and the King of Thieves, "True Crime: Streets of LA", Gargoyles as Desdemona/Coldfire, and most recently Justice League Unlimited as Amanda Waller.

Personal life

Pounder is married to Senegalese anthropologist Boubacar Kone. The couple were married in an African ceremony in Dakar, Senegal and were again remarried at a traditional Los Angeles, California event six months later. Kone is the founder of The Boribana Museum in Dakar, Senegal for the study of cultures of the African diaspora.

Pounder used to own a jewelry shop called Banji Girls with her business partner Conni Marie Brazelton but now she sells jewelry through requests via her website cchpounder.com.

Advocacy

As one of the founders of ANSA (Artists for a New South Africa), Pounder has energized awareness of post-apartheid and HIV/AIDS issues. In an interview, she said about the pandemic: "When it's this massive disease, and it's affecting things in five thousand different ways, it requires great strength and power--and there is power in numbers. So we need to involve as many people as we can, like we do with ANSA. I call it my little engine that could. It is a remarkable, tiny organization with a huge outreach. We use actors and artists with the biggest voices so they can use every opportunity to talk about AIDS."