Denise Huxtable

Denise is the fourth Huxtable child, a bright, artistic teenager with a stubborn streak and a talent for talking her way around her parents' rules. She's less interested in grades or convention than in figuring out who she is, drifting through fashion and half-formed plans while her father despairs gently at her lack of direction.

Lisa Bonet plays Denise with a dry, sleepy-eyed independence that cuts through the show's warmth without souring it — she's the Huxtable kid least impressed by her parents' credentials. Her deadpan comic timing against Bill Cosby's exasperation became one of the show's most reliable, and eventually spun off, pleasures.