Bill Cosby Biography

Bill Cosby began as a stand-up comic, became one of America’s most beloved television stars, and then saw his reputation and career disintegrate under the weight of dozens of sexual assault allegations spanning five decades. He was convicted in Pennsylvania on charges of sexual assault in 2018, serving three years in prison before his conviction was overturned by the state’s Supreme Court.

Bill Cosby began doing stand-up comedy in the early 1960s while attending Temple University, and his comedy career was kick-started by a 1963 appearance on Johnny Carson‘s Tonight Show. His first comedy album was Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow… Right! in 1964, and Cosby won multiple Grammy Awards for comedy recordings throughout the 1960s. He was particularly known for routines about childhood friends like Fat Albert and Old Weird Harold (both of whom later appeared in the 1970s cartoon series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids).

Bill Cosby starred with Robert Culp in the spoofy TV series I Spy from 1965-68, winning three Emmy Awards and becoming one of the few Black stars on primetime TV. Cosby appeared in many other TV shows (including the PBS educational show The Electric Company) and in movies including Uptown Saturday Night (1974, with Sidney Poitier) and Mother, Juggs and Speed (1976, with Raquel Welch).

From 1984-92, Bill Cosby dominated America’s primetime TV ratings with The Cosby Show, a family comedy in which he and Phylicia Rashad starred as Cliff and Claire Huxtable, and upscale New York couple raising their lovable and exasperating children. The show was a huge hit and, along with the 1986 book Fatherhood, re-established Bill Cosby as a leading comedian. From 1996-2000 he starred in a similar sitcom, Cosby, again with Rashad playing his wife. He is the author of many books, including the 1986 bestseller Fatherhood. He was given Kennedy Center Honors in 1998 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002.

Beginning in about 2014, however, Cosby faced a new surge of publicity around longstanding rumors of rape and other sexually inapproprite behavior. More than 40 women eventually came forward with stories stretching back to the 1960s that shared a common theme: Cosby had gained their trust, given them a drink or drugs that made them woozy or knocked them out, and then had sex with them without their consent or against their will. Cosby denied all allegations of sexual assault, but the sheer number and similarity of the allegations turned the public against him. Many groups cut ties with Cosby, including his alma mater Temple University; Spelman College, to which Cosby and his wife had donated $20 million in 1998, announced in July of 2015 that it would return the remainder of the money and discontinue its William and Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby Endowed Professorship.

On December 29, 2015, Bill Cosby was charged in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania with a felony charge of aggravated indecent assault. The charge was related to a 2004 incident with Andrea Constand, a woman he had met through Temple University, where she was Director of Operations for the women’s basketball team. Constand said that during a visit to Cosby’s home, he gave her pills and wine that rendered her unconscious, then assaulted her. In the frank words of the criminal complaint, “William Henry Cosby did penetrate the genitals of a the complainant with a part of his body after Cosby substantially impaired the complainant’s power to appraise or control her conduct by administering drugs, intoxicants or other means for the purpose of preventing resistance.” It marked the first time Bill Cosby had officially been charged with a crime.

Cosby was tried, but the first trial ended in a deadlocked jury in 2017. Cosby was convicted in 2018 on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, stemming from the 2004 incident with Andrea Constand. At the age of 81, Bill Cosby was designated a “sexually violent predator” by the court and began serving a sentence of three to 10 years.

However, on June 30, 2021, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ruled that Cosby should never have been charged, due to a non-prosecution agreement he had reached with a previous prosecutor in a separate civil case. He was freed from prison the same day.