Shari Lynn Belafonte (born September 22, 1954) is an American actress, model, writer and singer. The daughter of singer Harry Belafonte, she began her career as a fashion model before making her big screen debut appearing in the 1982 drama film If You Could See What I Hear. She is best known for her role as Julie Gillette in the ABC drama series Hotel from 1983 to 1988. She later went to star in the Canadian science fiction series Beyond Reality (1991–93). Belafonte also released two studio albums in the 1980s, and acted on stage in later years.
Shari Belafonte is the second daughter of Marguerite (née Byrd), a psychologist, and New York-born Harry Belafonte, a singer and actor. Her parents separated when her mother was pregnant with her. She attended Georgetown Day School in Washington, DC, Windsor Mountain School in Lenox, Massachusetts and Buxton School in Williamstown, Massachusetts, then Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts before transferring to Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drama. Her paternal grandmother was born in Jamaica, the child of a Scottish Jamaican mother and an Afro-Jamaican father. Her paternal grandfather also was born in Jamaica, the child of a black mother and Dutch-Jewish father of Sephardic Jewish descent. Harry, Jr. was raised Catholic.
Belafonte began her career as a model, becoming a successful cover girl model and appearing in commercials for Calvin Klein jeans. She made her feature film debut in 1982 in the movies Time Walker and If You Could See What I Hear. She then worked as a production assistant and assistant director in public television on the East Coast before moving to Los Angeles, where she became an assistant to the publicist at Hanna-Barbera productions. While getting her hands wet "behind the scenes", she also received a number of modeling and commercial assignments, and was known to have appeared on the covers of over 300 magazines as of 2015. Other feature films include Speed Zone, the made-for-television horror-comedy film The Midnight Hour, in which she also sang a song titled "Get Dead", and Fire, Ice and Dynamite.

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