227 star Toukie Smith who shared two children with Robert De Niro dies at 74
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The report attributes confirmation to Smith’s twins, Airyn and Julian, who said she died November 4 at a New York hospital. In their statement, cited as appearing in The Hollywood Reporter, they remembered their mother as “a force of nature.” Born Doris Smith in Philadelphia, she built a distinctive fashion career, working with designers including Hubert de Givenchy, Thierry Mugler and Issey Miyake. Bloomingdale’s named her Model of the Year in 1978.
Smith later brought her presence to television, appearing in Miami Vice before playing Eva Rawley on 227. Her film credits included I Like It Like That and The Preacher’s Wife. She and De Niro welcomed their twins through a surrogate in October 1995, during a relationship that ended the following year. Yet she valued a life beyond public attention. As she told the Los Angeles Times in 1990: “What’s great about a private life is it’s private.”
Smith's career took shape at a time when the runway offered designers a way to show how their clothes moved. Her work with designers as different as Givenchy, Mugler and Miyake put her in collections with different silhouettes, materials and ideas about presentation. That range helps explain why a single photograph or a list of clients captures only part of what she did. Recognition from a department store also placed her work before an audience that encountered fashion through advertising and retail as well as through runway shows.
Her transition to acting brought her to a medium that asked for a different kind of presence. On a television comedy, audiences come to recognize a character over a series of scenes and episodes. Eva Rawley belongs to the world of 227, the ensemble sitcom whose recurring neighbors gave the program its rhythm. That role put Smith in viewers' homes on a regular basis. People who discovered her through the show might later learn that she had already spent years working in fashion. Others encountered those parts of her career in the opposite order.
The films listed in the report show that her acting work continued beyond a single character. I Like It Like That and The Preacher's Wife were separate productions with distinct casts and stories. Both belong alongside her television credits when looking at the work she did after establishing herself as a model. The report's account of her family adds another dimension. The words her children shared were a remembrance of their mother. Her interview about privacy also makes clear that she placed value on the parts of her life she could keep to herself. Those two details offer a way to read the public tributes while respecting the private life she valued.
Her fashion and television credits also help put the public remembrance in perspective. The twins' statement describes the woman they knew at home. Viewers and people who worked in fashion remember the work she chose to put before the public. Her appearances on the runway, in comedy and in film gave different audiences a way to encounter that work. Together those credits show the range of a career that began well before her television role.