DIAHANN CARROLL

Legendary and award-winning actress Diahann Carroll —widely known for her trailblazing TV show Julia, as well as her roles on Dynasty and Grey’s Anatomy — died of cancer Friday in Los Angeles, her daughter, Susan Kay, confirms to PEOPLE. She was 84.

Born Carol Diahann Johnson to subway motorman John and nurse Mabel Johnson in the Bronx, New York, Carroll grew up in Harlem, where her family moved when she was an infant. Carroll started her career at 15, modeling for Essence magazine but her heart was in performing: “I always knew I had to do something that was in front of an audience,” Carroll told PEOPLE in 2008.

After graduating from New York’s High School of Music and Art, she briefly attended New York University to study child psychology. Those plans changed in 1954 when she won $3,000 on a TV talent show called Chance of a Lifetime. Singing engagements at prominent New York nightclubs soon followed, along with her Broadway and film debuts that same year: Carroll starred in the musical House of Flowers and had a supporting role opposite Dorothy Dandridge in the film Carmen Jones.

Carroll’s other prominent film roles during that time period include Clara in 1959’s Porgy and Bess starring Sidney Poitier, Dandridge and Sammy Davis Jr. and Connie Lampson in 1961’s Paris Blues, opposite Poitier, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Also during that time Carroll and Poitier began a nine-year love affair, though both were married when they met: Carroll to her first husband, record producer Monte Kay, and Poitier to his first wife, model Juanita Hardy.