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The New York native always wanted to act. Her mother was against the idea so Sanford snuck out of the house to perform in nightclubs. After winning third place in an amateur contest at the Apollo Theatre, she confessed her extracurricular activities and became a cleaning lady.
Sanford then married William "Sonny" Richmond, had three children and worked as a keypunch operator in the New York City welfare department. She was in her late 20s when the desire to act became a reality. Sanford joined the American Negro Theater, and in 1946, made her stage debut in the play, "On Strivers Row."
She moved to Los Angeles in 1960 to launch a movie career. Sanford acted in bit parts on TV shows such as "Bewitched" and "The Mod Squad," and had a semi-regular spot on "The Carol Burnett Show," but it was her performance in the 1965 Broadway production of "Amen Corner" that caught the eye of director Stanley Kramer. He cast her as the sharp-tongued maid, opposite Sidney Poitier, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, in the 1967 film classic "Guess Who`s Coming to Dinner?"
Three years later, TV producer Norman Lear hired Sandford to play the recurring role of Louise "Weezy" Mills Jefferson, Archie Bunker`s neighbor on the hit TV show "All in the Family." In 1975, the characters of Weezy and her husband George Jefferson (played by Sherman Hemsley) were given their own spin-off sitcom. "The Jeffersons," a comedy about a black couple who move from blue-collar Queens to the tony Upper East Side, aired for 11 seasons. In 1981, Sanford won the Emmy for Best Actress in a Comedy Series.
Although the show was canceled in 1985, Sanford and Hemsley continued to appear together in commercials for Old Navy stores, Denny`s restaurants and Nick at Nite, the cable network currently running "The Jeffersons" in syndication. In recent years, she also made cameos on shows such as "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and "The Young and the Restless." Sanford was honored with five Golden Globe nominations and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Biography Credit: www.imdb.com/name/nm0762567/bio
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On her Star of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, she said "Here with stars in my eyes - something that I dreamed about when I was 9 years old. There are others that deserve it, but let everybody get their own."
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