Leslie Uggams has had an enthralling career as a theatre and movie actor. The Harlem-born singer and actress is best recognised for her role in the Deadpool series, but she has had a brilliant career spanning seven decades. But, behind the scenes, her personal life might be the subject of a film after she married White Australian man Grahame Pratt in 1965, since their love affair has overcome all chances of interracial love…

Leslie was a great singer who cut a song for MGM at the age of 10 in 1953. Encouraged by her aunt, singer Eloise Uggams, she attended the Professional Children’s School of New York and the famed Julliard School of Music in New York.

But her musical success was just the beginning of her adventure; by 1969, she had her own TV variety show, “The Leslie Uggams Show,” which was the first network variety show hosted by a black person since “The Nat King Cole Show.”

Behind the scenes, though, she met and fell in love with actor Grahame Pratt. After meeting at Professional Children’s School in New York, where they were both pupils, the couple ran into one other again in Sydney during one of Leslie’s celebrity tours in Australia.

Leslie was aware of the consequences of dating a white man because she had done so in her adolescence, and her aunt had advised her not to explore the idea.

“I remember the shock I got once when I was dating a white boy,” Leslie told Ebony in 1967.