She is best known as Lieutenant Anita Van Buren (1993-present) on the long-running TV crime drama Law & Order. She is currently the longest-serving cast member. When it reaches its 366th episode in the 16th season, she will become the first actress to appear in 300 episodes.
Raised in Detroit as the youngest of five children, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Wayne State University and began her New York theater career in 1978. Merkerson was nominated for a Tony award for Best Actress for her performance as Berniece in The Piano Lesson and won an Obie Award in 1992 for her work in I'm Not Stupid. Her screen credits include Jacob's Ladder, Loose Cannons, She's Gotta Have It and James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, in which she played Joe Morton's terrified wife.
Merkerson made her television debut as Reba the Mail Lady on Pee Wee's Playhouse, and has appeared on The Cosby Show, among other series. But her most important single television appearance may have been in the first season Law and Order episode "Mushrooms," in which she portrayed the grief-stricken mother of an 11-month-old boy who is shot accidentally. Her work was not only memorable to the audience during that key first season, but also to the producers, who later picked Merkerson for the role of the new detective squad chief in the series' fourth season.
Merkerson's natural hair is in dreadlocks (a style that she feels the NYPD would not permit a squad chief to wear), so for her scenes as Lt. Van Buren she wears a wig.
Merkerson recently played a large role in the L&O episode, "Acid". In 2006, she won a Golden Globe award for Best Actress in the television movie Lackawanna Blues and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries. (her first starring role).
She is an outspoken advocate against smoking and for lung cancer research and awareness.
Her first name is usually cited as "Sharon" but she's humorously renamed herself: "It's for "Sweet" [because] so many people have difficulty with Epatha, which is what I prefer to be called."
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