Actor
Phylicia Rashad is a multi-talented performer and a magna cum laude graduate of Howard University. After college, Phylicia pursued an acting career in New York, where she was featured in such productions as The Cherry Orchard and Weep Not For Me. Her first TV appearance was a 1976 guest spot on Delvecchio. From 1983 to 1984, she portrayed Courtney Wright on the daytime soap One Life to Live. But it was her characterization of successful attorney and mother Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show that catapulted Phylicia to worldwide TV fame. Her natural elegance and chemistry with co-star Bill Cosby ensured her place in television history.

Post-Cosby Show, Phylicia appeared in several made-for-TV projects, including The Babysitter's Seduction and The Possession of Michael D. She was also featured in the film Once Upon A Time When We Were Colored. In 1996, she once again played Bill Cosby's onscreen wife in the successful sitcom Cosby, which ran from 1996 to 2000.

She continues to act in television and film, most recently in the TV movies The Old Settler and The Last Free Man. She has also kept up her theatrical work, both as a performer and a teacher at her alma mater. Rashad is active in such charities as the Diabetes Association and the Educational Teachers Association.

Character
Clair Olivia Huxtable (née Hanks), is the very eloquent, elegant wife of Cliff. Clair is playful, sometimes silly, yet very assertive. She is articulate and remarkably intelligent. She is a great debator and rarely ever loses an argument on the show. She has terrific recall about facts and dates, which she uses during discussions or arguments: in one episode she is shown quoting a passage and even the page number of a book during an appearance at a television roundtable. Clair is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and occasionally converses in these languages with visitors who speak them, to Cliff's mild annoyance. Although she is very strict, she is a very loving mother to her family. The character is loosely based upon Cosby's wife, Camille Olivia Hanks-Cosby.

Her age is directly stated only once during the series, and two separate episodes provide contradictory information on the age difference between herself and Cliff. He celebrates his 50th birthday during season three ("Cliff's 50th Birthday"), while she celebrates her 46th during season five ("Birthday Blues," two years later), indicating that she is six years younger. However, in the season four episode "The Locker Room," it is stated that Clair is four years younger. Also in the season one episode "Breaking with Tradition" when Denise asks Cliff where he would have gone to school if he had the choice he say Hillman because "that's where your mother went" implying that he and Claire are the same age. Either that or he stayed back quite a few times in school.

Her character was originally supposed to be a housewife, but when the show finally aired, she became a lawyer. During the series, she becomes a partner in her law firm. As an attorney she helps her family with legal issues, and she successfully represents her eldest daughter, Sondra, in a case over dishonest car repairs. When it came to the Huxtable household, she was in charge, even though she let Cliff think he was in charge (although Cliff was known to lay down the law when he had to). She was the chief disciplinarian of the children, as shown in an episode where Vanessa and her friends sneak off to Baltimore to see a rock concert and Clair delivers a memorable and scathing diatribe to her. Another memorable moment came when the normally composed Clair lost her temper when Sondra announced she wasn't going to law school after paying her tuition to attend Princeton.

Clair is also something of a disciplinarian to Cliff, particularly in matters of Cliff sticking to a healthful diet and rationing his junk food intake. Clair Huxtable has been ranked highly in several lists of the top television mothers. She was voted as television's "Favorite TV Mom" in a poll conducted by the Opinion Research Company in 2004. In 2009, she was included in the Top 5 Classic TV Moms by Film.com. In May 2012, Clair was one of the 12 moms chosen by users of iVillage on their list of "Mommy Dearest: The TV Moms You Love". AOL named her the ninth Most Memorable Female TV Character.