Erika Alexander reflects on her career: Living Single, Soderbergh, and being discovered at 14

For a generation of viewers, Erika Alexander is and always will be Maxine Shaw, attorney-at-law, the sharpest tongue in the Living Single brownstone.

But Max is one stop on a career that started when Alexander was discovered on a Philadelphia street at 14 and has refused to sit still since.

She has crossed nine hours of Peter Brook's The Mahabharata, sparred with Whoopi Goldberg in The Long Walk Home, turned