Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon was born Garcelle Beauvais in St. Marc, Haiti on November 26th 1966. She is a Haitian American actress and former model who is probably best known for playing Assistant District Attorney Valerie Heywood in the hit US TV Series NYPD Blue and her modelling work for Avon and Mary Kay Cosmetics.
Garcelle has six older siblings and attended boarding school until her family moved to Miami after her parents divorced when she was 16 years old.
When she was 17 Garcelle had set her sights on becoming a model and so she moved to New York to pursue her dream. When she arrived there she was lucky enough to be signed with Ford Models, one of the top model agencies worldwide and this lead to her gaining many high profile jobs such as print ads for Avon and Mary Kay Cosmetics.
She soon became interested in film and TV work and her big break came when she won the role of A.D.A. Valerie Heywood in the hit TV series NYPD Blue. She starred in the show from 2001-2004 appearing in a total of 54 episodes.
She is currently happily married to an agent named Mike Nilon and has a son named Oliver (Born in 1992) from her first marriage to producer Daniel Saunders which lasted over 6 years.
She was voted one of "The 10 Sexiest Women of 2001" by the readers of Black Men Magazine and is fluent in French.
Look out for Garcelle in many more upcoming movies in the future as she has just finished filming for ‘I know who killed me’ and is currently in pre production for ‘The Cure’.