Cherylene Alice Lee (June 13, 1953 – March 18, 2016) was an American actress and writer.

Life

Lee was born and raised in Los Angeles, and was a fourth-generation Chinese-American. She had two sisters, Priscilla "Puggy" and Virginia. She began a career as a child actress and dancer at age three, and performed in a song and dance team with her sister Virginia in Las Vegas for three summers. She graduated from

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

with a BA in Paleontology and from

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

with an MS in Geology. She subsequently managed an alternative wastewater treatment plant as a

Disney Imagineer Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development, Inc., commonly referred to as Imagineering, is the research and development arm of The Walt Disney Company, responsible for the creation, design, and construction of Disney theme parks and att ...

. In 1977, she returned to the stage, performing in ''A Chorus Line''.In 1983, she began writing plays, poetry, and fiction. Her plays include ''The Legacy Codes'' about the

Wen Ho Lee Wen Ho Lee or Li Wenho (; born December 21, 1939) is a Taiwanese-American scientist who worked for the University of California at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He created simulations of nuclear explosions for the purposes of ...

affair and ''Carry the Tiger to the Mountain'' about the death of Vincent Chin. In 2015, Lee self-published an autobiography, ''"Just Like Really": An Uncommon Chinese American Memoir''. On March 18, 2016, Lee died in her sleep with her two sisters at her side, after a long battle with breast cancer.

References

External links

cherylenelee.com"Just Like Really": An Uncommon Chinese American Memoir by Cherylene Lee
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Cherylene 1953 births 2016 deaths American actresses of Chinese descent American film actresses American writers of Chinese descent Actresses from Los Angeles Deaths from breast cancer 20th-century American actresses 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American dramatists and playwrights 21st-century American women writers American women memoirists 21st-century American memoirists American women dramatists and playwrights Writers from Los Angeles