Jacqui Gordon-Lawrence
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Jacqui Gordon-Lawrence is a British actress, most famous for playing the role of Etta Tavernier in the BBC soap opera EastEnders.
She trained to be a dancer at the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance in New York, when she moved there with her Jamaican born parents. However, she felt she was not good enough to excel in this profession, so in 1981 she switched to stage acting and later to film and television.
Her first notable role was in the 1989 film Strapless, where she played a nurse. However, her role in EastEnders has been her most notable. She played the school teacher Etta Tavernier from 1990 - 1992, returning briefly in 1994. The introduction of the Tavernier family heralded the first time that an entire family had joined the programme all at once. Their introduction was also a well-intentioned attempt to portray a wider range of black characters than had previously been achieved on the show. During her stint, Gordon-Lawrence's character battled with many family, marital and religious problems, including the abortion of an unborn child, who had been diagnosed with sickle-cell anaemia.
Since leaving EastEnders she has gone on to star in the television mini-series close relations (1998), the televised film The Greatest Store in the World (1999) and most recently in an episode of the ITV police drama The Bill (2001).
She lives in Welling, Kent, with the former boxing champion Horace Notice and their daughter, Naomi.
