Alaina Reed-Amini, an actress and singer whose best-known characters were denizens of two of television’s celebrated addresses, “Sesame Street” and the tenement known only by its street number, “227,” died Thursday in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 63.
The cause was cancer, her publicist, Billy Laurence, said.
Through most of her career — before her marriage to Tamim Amini in 2008 — Ms. Reed-Amini was known as Alaina Reed Hall or Alaina Reed. She was an accomplished cabaret singer and musical theater performer when she arrived on “Sesame Street,” public television’s long-running children’s program, in 1976, seven years into the life of the show. She played Olivia, a photographer whose brother, Gordon (played by Roscoe Orman) was already a character on the show.
She remained in the cast until 1988, frequently performing in skits with Mr. Orman that illustrated lessons about sibling relationships. She also sang, either solo or with her “Sesame Street” neighbors, human and puppet.
In 1985, Ms. Reed-Amini was cast in “227,” a comedy series about the residents of an apartment building in Washington that focused on the character of Mary Jenkins, an engaging busybody (played by Marla Gibbs), her family and their neighbors. Ms. Reed-Amini played Rose Lee Holloway, a single neighbor and friend of Mary’s who became, at one point, the building’s landlord. While working on “227” she met and married a fellow cast member, Kevin Peter Hall. (Their characters married on the show as well.) Mr. Hall died in 1991.
Bernice Reed was born Nov. 10, 1946, in Springfield, Ohio, and attended Kent State University. She was already known as Alaina Reed when she began singing in New York nightclubs in the early 1970s, usually to glowing reviews.
“Miss Reed is a lean, willowy young woman with a gospel-based style that sometimes takes her to the edges of the Aretha Franklin idiom of pop singing but, primarily, is used to project her songs with an unusual sense of believability,” John S. Wilson wrote of her in The New York Times in 1972.
She appeared in musical theater pieces, including “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road,” an adaptation of the Beatles’ album, and William Finn’s “In Trousers,” the first of a trilogy of plays about a young gay man named Marvin. (Parts two and three became the Broadway musical “Falsettos.”) On Broadway, she appeared as a replacement cast member in the original “Chicago,” the 1977 revival of “Hair” and “Eubie!”
Ms. Reed-Amini appeared on numerous television series, among them “A Different World,” “Ally McBeal,” “Friends,” “The Drew Carey Show” and “E.R.” Her movie credits included “Death Becomes Her” and “Cruel Intentions.”
Ms. Reed-Amini’s first marriage ended in divorce. Her survivors include her husband; information about others was not available.