From the good folks here at HipHopDX, we’d like to wish you all a Happy New Year! With the freshness still anew in the ’08, Beauty & Brains wants to continue to ride high off of the girls that have kept you, the reader, hating and loving this section.

I proudly present Ms. Denyce Lawton. The D.C.-to-California transplant has been on the grind and has a career that has literally blossomed in front of your eyes. This multi-racial beauty (Black/Korean) can be seen on Tyler Perry’s hit series – House of Payne on TBS. Playing Dana, Lawton has went from Seoul, South Korea to high ranking positions in the entertainment business.

2008 looks to further her growing impact within the business and as Ms. Lawton speaks with Beauty & Brains, she discusses her Hollywood ambitions, how the camera outweighed the schoolbooks and gives a tidbit of advice for those willing to follow in her huge footsteps.

Beauty & Brains: You’re a very busy young woman. How does your ambition outweigh your availability?
Denyce Lawton: Oh gosh! It’s never balanced. I’m one of those people who want to do everything. If I had five more hours in the day, it’d still be not enough to get everything that I want done. I’m a hand’s on person and I see the world as an opportunity to conquer all of my dreams. There is so much work and so much money to make that there’s not enough hours in the day to do so.

B&B: What were some of the setbacks you faced coming from South Korea to the U.S.?
DL: I was born in the South Korea, I was raised a military brat. I’ve lived all over the country and the world. I use it as a tool for my career, though. I didn’t keep a lot of friends because after that I’d have to move. I never familiarized myself with the areas that I lived in. There were setbacks to it, though. With me living in different areas, people never really understood me or where I was coming from or even my ethnicity. After that, people judge what they don’t understand. It’s been a set back for me. But by being an actress and being in the industry, it’s a great tool to take those criticisms and use it to study a character. I get to unleash my anger.

B&B: Now, you graduated at the top percentile of your high school class? Why not pursue the life of an academic instead of an actress?
DL: I went to school for medicine and it was something that I had wanted to do. I thought that it would help me to help people, but later on I realized that that’s not the only way you can help people. Sometimes people think that the entertainment business is not the way to “help” people. I was going through a lot while being in the medical field. I saw it [entertainment business] as a stress reliever. I was taking acting classes and I saw things that I could identify with in the entertainment business. That’s why a lot of people really identify with music. Once I got the acting bug, I went with it and it touched a lot of people who I knew. Acting is a lot more stress free and fun, but I can still see myself as a doctor at the end of the day… one day. I am not discouraging anyone from being in the entertainment business or pursuing an education, but being an actress is my plan A. Not saying that medicine is my plan B, but I have so much appreciation for the business. Being in this business is school; it is boot camp… you either do it or you don’t.

B&B: The Internet allows people unprecedented access into one’s life. When has someone taken that opening too far?
DL: Ah, geez, when do they not?! I reluctantly got a MySpace page and since then my life has been an open book. You’ve heard the stories of people really thinking that an actor is a certain character, right? Well, the world is the same way. If I don’t take certain pictures or if I do, people react to me in certain ways. They feel like they have the right to come and touch me or say something to me that is really inappropriate. They feel as if I owe them something through MySpace. Sometimes people take it too far. Women really take it too far. They’ll come up to me in public places and do something really disrespectful. I think that it’s way out of place. People hide behind computers or half the time people don’t look the way they say they look.

B&B: Assistant Junior Publicist for 20th Century Fox Films and an Assistant VP job at Warner Brother Records aren’t anything to scoff at. How did the access benefit you with your other endeavors?
DL: The first job I had was at Warner Brothers and the initial reason I got in was because I saw a lot of people in the music industry find their way onto the big screen. In my mind, I thought that I could juggle both lives as a musician and an actress. I was blessed with knowing the right people. At my job, I would meet magazine editors, publishers, print photographers and they’d like my look. They would express interest in me and it was definitely a different twist. It wasn’t what I initially went for, but it went along with the job description. When I left Warner Brothers, it was a while before I went to 20th Century Fox. But the job just fell into my lap. I was working in Times Square and I would drive down to D.C. to work in a bar. I hit up a temp office and it was one of the jobs that I got. I took the job of an assistant. A day turned into a couple of months and eventually, one of the ladies was getting married and the job was up against me and another lady. She left; I got the job and the check. The only conflict was that I wasn’t able or allowed to interact with the actors or directors and whatnot. I wasn’t able to network the way I thought I could. But I did learn the other ends of the business. Continued on page 2 »