Kat Graham
American actress and singer (born 1989)
Katerina Alexandre Hartford Graham (born September 5, 1989) is a Swiss-born American actress, singer, and dancer. She played Bonnie Bennett on the CW supernatural drama series The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017). Her film credits include The Parent Trap (1998), 17 Again (2009), The Roommate (2011), Honey 2 (2011), Addicted (2014), and All Eyez on Me (2017). Graham has released two EPs and four studio albums.
Early life
Katerina Alexandre Hartford Graham was born on September 5, 1989, in Geneva, Switzerland, and raised in Los Angeles, California, United States. Her father, Joseph, is of Americo-Liberian descent, and her mother, Natasha, was Jewish (from a family from Poland and Russia). Graham's father was a music executive and the godfather of two of producer Quincy Jones' children. Her paternal grandfather was a UN Ambassador, serving for 40 years in the Netherlands, Sweden, Romania, and Kenya. Graham disclosed in an interview that her father left the music industry to work as a journalist under his father for the UN. Her maternal and paternal grandparents were refugees from the Holocaust and Liberia, respectively, and she credits them as an inspiration for her work as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR.
Her parents divorced when she was 5 years old. During a 2025 episode of the podcast Baby, This is Keke Palmer, Graham revealed she and her father were estranged.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Kat Graham” as american actress and singer (born 1989). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american actress and singer (born 1989). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q151118. The first chronological checks are 1989, 2009, 2017 and 1998.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Kat Graham”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Kat Graham primary sources, Kat Graham archive and Graham research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Kat Graham”?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Kat Graham” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.