New Orleans 'Queen Sugar' Actress Carol Sutton Dies from COVID-19 Complications at 76

Carol Sutton, the New Orleans stage and screen veteran whose career spanned more than five decades, has died at 76 from complications of COVID-19. She passed at Touro Infirmary in her hometown, a city whose theaters, film sets and festivals she never really left.

Sutton began acting with the Dashiki Project Theatre in the late 1960s and became one of the most dependable character actresses in Southern film production. Audiences knew her face from Steel Magnolias, Monster's Ball and Ray, and more recently from her recurring work on Ava DuVernay's OWN drama Queen Sugar, adapted from Natalie Baszile's novel.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards paid tribute, calling her 'a legend of New Orleans theater,' and colleagues across the industry remembered a performer who mentored generations of Black actors in the city long before Hollywood South became an industry term.

Her death, in a year that took so much from the performing arts, was mourned far beyond Louisiana. This page — one of the most-linked in the old Word & Film archive — is preserved and updated in her memory.