Mary A. Lincoln
Actresses who portrayed Mrs. Lincoln
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- Veteran actress Christine Estabrook has built an impressive portfolio of roles in film, television, and theater.
Born and raised in East Aurora, near Buffalo, New York, Estabrook was one of five children raised by a single mother. She worked her way through school at various jobs, including a stint at the very first Fisher-Price toy factory making toys by hand. After graduating from the prestigious Yale School of Drama (among her classmates was Meryl Streep), she moved to New York to pursue an acting career.
She quickly made her mark in the theater, starring in Broadway productions of The Sisters Rosenzweig, The Heidi Chronicles, I'm Not Rappaport, The Inspector General, and The Cherry Orchard. She won a Drama Desk Award for the Off-Broadway production of The Boys Next Door, an Obie Award for her role in Pastorale, and a Drama Desk Award nomination for her performance in North Shore Fish.
Estabrook's credits also include numerous regional theater productions, and four years working in the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference. After 17 years of performing on stage, Estabrook decided she was ready for new challenges and moved to Los Angeles, eager to work in a different medium.
Since then, she has guest-starred on some of television's most popular shows and appeared in many feature films.
The role of Mrs. Huber on Desperate Housewives (2004) was written especially for the actress by the series' creator, Marc Cherry. - Janice Carroll was born on 19 February 1932 in Hollywood, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Shane (1953), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967) and Simon & Simon (1981). She died on 10 September 1993 in San Fernando Valley, California, USA.
- Rachel Jakes is known for Beat the Clock (1950). She has been married to John Jakes since July 1951. They have four children.
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Sally Margaret Field was born November 6, 1946 in Pasadena, California, to actress Margaret Field (née Morlan) and salesman Richard Dryden Field. Her parents divorced in 1950 and her mother then married stuntman Jock Mahoney, and they had a daughter, Princess O'Mahoney. She also has a brother, Richard Field. Sally attended Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California.
Her acting career began in 1965, when she landed the role of Frances Elizabeth 'Gidget' Lawrence in Gidget (1965); it was canceled after only one season because of bad ratings. She went on to star in The Flying Nun (1967), which ran for three seasons. She also appeared in her first film in 1967, The Way West (1967) opposite Kirk Douglas. In the next few years she appeared in numerous TV movies and TV shows such as Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring (1971), Marriage: Year One (1971), The Girl with Something Extra (1973), and Sybil (1976). In 1977 she starred alongside then-boyfriend Burt Reynolds in the box office hit Smokey and the Bandit (1977), which led to a less successful sequel in 1980. In 1979 she starred in the popular film Norma Rae (1979) and she received her first Oscar for that role.
In the years that followed she starred in films such as Absence of Malice (1981), Kiss Me Goodbye (1982), Places in the Heart (1984) (she received her second Oscar for her role), Murphy's Romance (1985), Punchline (1988) and Steel Magnolias (1989). In 1993 she starred alongside Robin Williams and Pierce Brosnan in the popular comedy Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). A year after, she played the role of Tom Hanks character's mother (even though she's only ten years older than he is in real life) in Forrest Gump (1994). The film was a huge commercial success and won six Academy awards.
Since then she has appeared in TV movies and miniseries such as A Woman of Independent Means (1995), Merry Christmas, George Bailey (1997), From the Earth to the Moon (1998) and David Copperfield (2000). In 2000 she appeared in the film Where the Heart Is (2000) with Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd, and in 2003 she starred alongside Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003). She also appeared in 12 episodes of ER (1994) from 2000 to 2006. From 2006 to 2011, she played the role of matriarch Nora Walker in the hit television show Brothers & Sisters (2006), which earned her an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Getting back into film, she earned her third Oscar nomination for Lincoln (2012) and played Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and its blockbuster sequel.
Sally has been married twice, first to Steven Craig from 1968 to 1973. They had two sons together, Peter Craig and Eli Craig. Her second marriage was to film producer Alan Greisman from 1984 to 1994. They had one son together, Samuel Greisman. Between marriages, from 1976 to 1980, she was in a relationship with Burt Reynolds.- Leila McIntyre was born on 20 December 1882 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), Pick a Star (1937) and On the Level (1930). She was married to John Hyams. She died on 9 January 1953 in West Los Angeles, California, USA.
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This saucy and engaging Tennessee born-and-bred brunette beauty came into the world on March 2, 1913, the daughter of John Thomas Weaver and Ellen Martin, both non-professionals. She attended private and high schools while growing up and attended the University of Kentucky and the University of Indiana. Showing early signs of a musical talent, she instinctively made use of her beauty and singing capabilities as she strove to find a place for herself in the entertainment business.
Paying her dues as a band singer, model, and stage performer (with the McCauley Stock Company and in Billy Rose's Shrine Minstrels), Marjorie made an inauspicious film debut in Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (1934) in an uncredited bit part. 20th Century Fox saw something special in her, however, and signed her up in 1936. Her first few years were uneventful playing a round of alluring bit parts as chorus girls and secretary/receptionist types. Moving up the credits ladder she found lead and second lead femme roles coming her way, typically essaying the resourceful but wholesome daughter, paramour or "girl Friday" type opposite a number of virile and handsome leading men, including Ricardo Cortez in The Californian (1937); Tyrone Power in Second Honeymoon (1937); Warner Baxter in I'll Give a Million (1938); John Barrymore in Hold That Co-ed (1938); and Cesar Romero in The Cisco Kid and the Lady (1939). In the comedy Sally, Irene and Mary (1938), Alice Faye, Joan Davis and Marjorie made up the distaff trio of starry-eyed hopefuls (Marjorie played "Mary"), while providing lovely distraction in a couple of The Ritz Brothers vehicles -- Life Begins in College (1937) and Kentucky Moonshine (1938). One of her best parts came opposite Henry Fonda as Mary Todd to his Abe Lincoln in the quality bio-drama Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). She was also top-billed in such programmers as Murder Among Friends (1941) and Man at Large (1941). Most of her assignments, however, were relegated to "B" pictures and following co-star roles in two "Charlie Chan" and three "Michael Shayne" mysteries, Marjorie left Fox (in 1942) by choice and free-lanced. Her rating did not improve much, however, although she was seen to good advantage in the serial The Great Alaskan Mystery (1944). She made her last inconsequential movies with Fashion Model (1945) and Leave It to Blondie (1945).
Marjorie decided to retire from the business in 1945 and, save for an unbilled part (by accident) in We're Not Married! (1952) over at Fox, that was all she wrote. Married to Don Briggs in 1943, she and her husband had a son and daughter, Joel and Leigh, and later owned and operated a classy liquor establishment in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. She died following a stroke in 1994.- Actress
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When Ruth Gordon convinced her father, a sea captain, to let her pursue acting she came to New York and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She acted in a few silents made at Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 1915. She made her Broadway debut in "Peter Pan" as Nibs the same year. The next 20 years she spent on stage, even appearing at the Old Vic in London in the successful run of "The Country Wife" in 1936. Nearly 25 years after her film debut, she returned to movies briefly. Her most memorable role during this period in the early 1940s was as Mary Todd in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940).
She left Hollywood to return to theater. Back in New York, she married Garson Kanin in 1942 (her first husband Gregory Kelly, a stage actor, died in 1927). She began writing plays, and, later, her husband and she collaborated on screenplays for Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, whose screen relationship was modeled on their own marriage. She returned to film acting during the 1960s. It is during this last period of her career that she became a movie star, with memorable roles in Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Harold and Maude (1971). She wrote several books during the mid-1970s and appeared on TV. She won an Emmy for her role on Taxi (1978) in 1979.- Actress
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Sarah Padden was born on 16 October 1881 in Sunderland, England, UK. She was an actress, known for A Woman's Face (1941), The Mad Monster (1942) and Women Won't Tell (1932). She was married to George Clarence Sackett. She died on 4 December 1967 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
- Marshell Canney is known for The Conspirator (2010).
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Mary Elizabeth Winstead is an actress known for her versatile work in a variety of film and television projects. Possibly most known for her role as Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), she has also starred in critically acclaimed independent films such as Smashed (2012), for which she received an Independent Spirit Award nomination, as well as genre fare like Final Destination 3 (2006) and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (2007).
Winstead was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina but largely raised in Sandy, Utah, which is where she discovered a love for the performing arts. She grew up training to be a ballerina and attended the Joffrey Ballet School training program at the age of 12. It was also around this time that she began to pursue a career in acting and soon started working steadily in television and film.
Winstead is also a recording artist and performs under the name "Got a Girl" alongside producer Dan the Automotor.- Actress
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Penelope Ann Miller is a distinguished artist in film, television, and theater. She has worked with some of the most notable actors and directors in Hollywood. This list includes Al Pacino and Sean Penn in director Brian de Palma's Carlito's Way, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination; Marlon Brando and Matthew Broderick in The Freshman; Robert De Niro and Robin Williams in Penny Marshall's Awakenings; Robert Downey Jr. in Sir Richard Attenborough's Chaplin; Danny DeVito and Gregory Peck in Norman Jewison's Other People's Money; Matthew Broderick and Christopher Walken in Mike Nichols' Biloxi Blues; and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Ivan Reitman's Kindergarten Cop.
On the television side, Ms. Miller stars as 'Joyce Dahmer' in Ryan Murphy's hugely successful miniseries, Dahmer-Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story for Netflix. The true story has been nominated for 13 Emmy Awards and has over a billion hours viewed and counting. Playing the mother of the notorious serial killer, Miller stars opposite, Evan Peters, Richard Jenkins and Niecy Nash. Penelope also starred in American Crime, the critically acclaimed ABC series, from Academy Award winner John Ridley, opposite Regina King. Other credits include the very popular "College Admissions Scandal" for Lifetime, New York Prison Break; The Seduction of Joyce Mitchell for Lifetime, playing "Joyce Mitchell" in another true life story and winning rave reviews. She also starred in HBO's Witch Hunt, directed by Paul Schrader, and starring opposite Dennis Hopper, TNT's Men of a Certain Age opposite Ray Romano, MGM's Rocky Marciano directed by Charles Winkler and opposite Jon Favreau and George C. Scott. Miller also starred once again in another true life story in USA's critically acclaimed Mary Kay Letourneau: All American Girl, playing 'Mary Kay' and directed by Llyod Kramer, opposite Mercedes Ruehl. Ms. Miller starred opposite Oscar winner Jean Dujardin in the black and white silent film The Artist, winner of five Academy Awards including Best Picture. She also took on the role of 'Elizabeth Turner' in the controversial true story of Nat Turner's 1831 slave rebellion The Birth of a Nation starring opposite Colman Domingo and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, winning The Grand Jury and Audience awards at the Sundance Film Festival. Some of her other films include Adventures in Babysitting directed by Chris Columbus, Big Top Pee-wee opposite Paul Reubens, The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag opposite Cathy Moriarty and Julianne Moore, The Shadow opposite Alec Baldwin, The Relic directed by Peter Hyams, and The Messengers opposite Kristen Stewart. Additionally, Penelope wrapped on the upcoming feature film Reagan starring opposite Dennis Quaid as 'Ronald Reagan' and Penelope as 'Nancy Reagan'.
Ms. Miller was also nominated for a Tony Award for her portrayal of 'Emily' in Lincoln Center's Broadway revival of Our Town.- Actress
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Debra Crittenden is known for Uncanny X-Men (2012), Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies (2012) and Evening Shade (2022).- Kay Hammond was born on 14 December 1901 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. She was an actress, known for Abraham Lincoln (1930), Her Private Affair (1929) and Racetrack (1933). She was married to Henry Visscher Wetherby. She died on 7 January 1982 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Nana Bryant was born on 23 November 1888 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. She was an actress, known for Harvey (1950), Brewster's Millions (1945) and Theodora Goes Wild (1936). She was married to F Clifford Earl Thompson and Phineas Gourley McLean (Ted MacLean). She died on 24 December 1955 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Rosemary Knower was born on 1 July 1942 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. She was an actress, known for Friday the 13th (2009), Live Free or Die Hard (2007) and Serial Mom (1994). She died on 27 March 2019 in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, USA.
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Lucia Frangione is an internationally produced award winning actor and author with thirty stage plays to her name. She is beginning to cross over into film.
Plays include: Disrupted, Kindred, The Thin Man, Espresso, Leave of Absence, Fresco, Paradise Garden, Cariboo Magi, Christmas on the Air and Chickens. She currently has a play in development with the Firehall Theatre.
As an actor she has worked in regional theatres across Canada. Recent roles include: Rosida in Fado at Firehall Theatre/Puente, Countess in All's Well that Ends Well at Bard on the Beach, Annie Wilkes in Misery at the Arts Club, Emma in Annapurna at Christy Webb productions, Jesse in Farewell My Lovely at Vertigo Theatre, Vicki in Except In the Unlikely Event of War at Pi Theatre/Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, Estelle in No Exit at ACT, San Francisco, Myrtle in Brief Encounter at The Vancouver Playhouse and Manitoba Theatre Centre, PG in NiX at Alberta Theatre Projects and Pam in the Full Monty at Persephone Theatre, SK.
Her debut novel, Grazie, is a BC best seller and published with Talon Books.
Frangione has won the Outstanding Actor in a Leading role Jessie Richardson award (Vancouver), the Gordon Armstrong Award (twice) (Vancouver), the Sydney Risk playwriting award (Vancouver) The CAEA emerging artist award (Canada) The Unknown Country award (NY NY)
Lucia lives in Vancouver, BC, with her husband, daughter and step son.- Dorothea Hammond is known for They've Killed President Lincoln! (1971).
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Jane Therese Curtin was born September 6th, 1947. Years later, a 27-year-old Jane auditioned for a comedy variety show. which turned out to be the the thing that would first expose her to fame, Saturday Night Live (1975). Jane won the audition against Mimi Kennedy, a tough competitor. Also in the same year (1975), she married Patrick Lynch.
After her five-year run on SNL, Jane moved on, having a daughter named Tess in-between a new show with Susan Saint James titled Kate & Allie (1984), which was about two divorced women living in one house with their children. After Kate & Allie (1984) and several film roles, including Coneheads (1993), came 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996), a show about aliens living in Ohio and adjusting to Earth. In 2001, 3rd Rock ended production, and Jane eventually brought her talents to Broadway. She lives with her husband and daughter.- Actress
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Geraldine Hughes (born 1970) is a Northern Irish film, television and stage actress. She was born in West Belfast and lived in the Divis flats for a time. She won a private scholarship and attended university in America. She is best known for her portrayal of "Little Marie" in 2006's Rocky Balboa. Hughes also wrote and performed a one-woman show entitled Belfast Blues in New York City and appeared on television on ER and Profiler, among others. Recently, she played Clint Eastwood's daughter-in-law in Gran Torino.- Renowned and highly respected actress Sada Thompson has earned critical acclaim both on stage and TV for her noble, strong-minded matrons, but her more challenging and compelling work has come when her characters have displayed darker, more neurotic tones.
Born in Des Moines, Iowa, she was the eldest of three children of magazine editor Hugh Woodruff Thompson and his wife Corlyss Gibson. After a family move to New Jersey, Sada developed an interest in acting, performing in school plays. She subsequently studied drama at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.
Upon graduating in 1949, she began to build up her resume in regional stock and with repertory companies appearing in such productions as "Hay Fever", "The Little Foxes", "Born Yesterday", "The Clandestine Marriage" and "The Cocktail Party". Making her off-Broadway debut in 1955 with the first concert reading of Dylan Thomas' "Under Milk Wood", Sada won a 1957 Drama Desk award for her work in both The Misanthrope" and "The River Line" and, thereafter, started leaning heavily toward the classics -- "Much Ado About Nothing," "Othello," "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "Twelfth Night," "The Tempest" and "Richard II" to name a few. The 1970s began exceptionally well, hitting her zenith with complex, transcending performances in both "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the Moon Marigolds" (earning both Drama Desk and Obie awards) and "Twigs," in which she captured the Tony (as well as Drama Desk, Obie and Sarah Siddons awards) in which she played four roles--three sisters and their elderly mother.
This renewed attention for Sada finally lent itself to film and TV work. The dark-haired, somewhat plump-figured woman with classy but slightly offbeat features was not deemed marketable for film. So, despite adding distinctive support to the dramas Desperate Characters (1971) and The Pursuit of Happiness (1971), it was television that would garner her the attention she longed for and deserved. She won her first Emmy nomination playing Mary Todd Lincoln in Lincoln (1974) opposite Hal Holbrook's Honest Abe. The following year, she earned another nomination as Jack Lemmon's put-upon wife in The Entertainer (1975), a TV remake of the 1960 British film. The Emmy would finally come to her for her sensible mother role in the touching dramatic series Family (1976). As the proper, intelligent, slightly remote Kate Lawrence," mother of three, Sada became a TV symbol of strength, courage and integrity during the show's four seasons. She went on to receive two more Emmy nominations as Rhea Perlman's mother on Cheers (1982) and as accused California schoolteacher Virginia McMartin, on trial for sexual abuse, in the mini-movie Indictment: The McMartin Trial (1995). The quality of her performance along with those of fellow actors James Woods, Shirley Knight and Henry Thomas (of E.T. fame), lent an air of distinction to the obvious tabloid-driven material.
In addition to other socially-relevant mini-movies, Sada occasionally returned to her beloved theater roots. She won a second Sarah Siddons award for the title role in "Driving Miss Daisy" (1989), and enjoyed a return to Broadway after nearly 20 years with "Any Given Day" in 1993. Elsewhere, her warm, soothing voice has been used frequently in documentary narratives and books-on-tape. Ms. Thompson, who lived in Connecticut with long-time husband (since 1949) Donald Stewart, had one daughter, Liza Stewart, a costume designer. She died in a Danbury hospital of lung disease on May 4, 2011, at age 83. - Actress
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A Tony and Emmy Award winner, Donna Murphy has forged a career of exceptional diversity, impressing both audiences and critics with her depth and skill. This "seductive actress of major transformative powers" (NY Times) was named one of three "Legit Luminaries," alongside Joan Didion and Christine Ebersole, in Variety's Women's Impact Issue. She will next be seen on Starz' hit series Power as Lorette Walsh, the opponent of Rashad Tate, played by Larenz Tate.
Recognized as a gifted character actress in the film world, she received international critical acclaim for her performance as the mercurial Marie in Todd Solondz' Dark Horse, with Selma Blair, Christopher Walken, and Mia Farrow. In Vera Farmiga's 2011 directorial debut, Higher Ground, she co-starred with Farmiga as Kathleen, the film's troubled matriarch, creating a sensual, heartbreaking characterization. Murphy's animated feature debut, voicing the villainess Mother Gothel in Disney's mega-hit Tangled, earned her rave reviews for her scene stealing performance. She is also widely recognized for her performances as Judy Braddock, the hardworking, suburban single mom to Scarlett Johansson in The Nanny Diaries; the elegant and demanding, but ultimately sympathetic ballet instructor Juliette Simone, in Nicholas Hytner's Center Stage; and Anij, the quietly alluring and wise leader in Star Trek: Insurrection, opposite Sir Patrick Stewart. Other select film credits include: No Pay, Nudity opposite Gabriel Byrne, The Bourne Legacy with Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz, Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, Darren Aronovsky's The Fountain, Rosalie Octavius in Spider-Man 2, The Door in the Floor, The Astronaut's Wife with Johnny Depp, and Jade, directed by William Friedkin.
One of the most beloved and honored stage actresses of her generation, New York Magazine named Murphy one of "Three Living Legends" of the New York Theater and in 2003 awarded her one of their prestigious New York Awards. Murphy earned her two Tony Awards for her spellbinding performance in Stephen Sondheim's Passion and for her "resplendent, matchless" (New York Post) portrayal of Anna Leonowens in Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic The King and I. For her hilarious comic tour de force as Ruth Sherwood in the Broadway Revival of Wonderful Town, she received Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Astaire Awards, as well as a Tony® nomination. Her mesmerizing performance as the Austrian chanteuse, Lotte Lenya, in Hal Prince's production of LoveMusik, earned her Drama Desk, Drama League, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and another Tony nomination. She garnered yet another Tony Award nomination and rave reviews for her performance as a Yiddish Theater star during the Holocaust in Roundabout Theatre Company's The People in the Picture.
Murphy's off-Broadway theater highlights include three of the most successful productions in New York City Center Encores! History: Anyone Can Whistle, Follies, and Wonderful Town; Tony Kushner's production of Helen; Lincoln Center Theater's Hello, Again and Twelve Dreams opposite Mischa Barton. For Shakespeare in the Park's 50th Anniversary season, Murphy took on the role of the Witch in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods, which also starred Amy Adams, Jessie Mueller, and Denis O'Hare. She earned Drama League and Drama Desk nominations for her performance.
Murphy returned to Broadway in 2017 when she shared the iconic role of Dolly Gallagher Levi with the legendary Bette Midler in the Tony Award winning revival of Hello, Dolly! She received great critical acclaim for the "gutsiest star turn in town" (NY Daily News) and "her own megawatt glow; her peerless musical-comedy technique, deep-dish characterization and supple vocals." (The Hollywood Reporter)
Murphy's first television film, HBO's "Someone Had to be Benny," earned her a Daytime Emmy as Best Actress in a Drama Special or Series, as well as a Cable Ace Award, and she starred as Jane Green, the matriarch of a prominent Southern family in PBS' Civil War drama series, "Mercy Street." Select recurring and guest star appearances include NBC's "The Blacklist," ABC's " Quantico", the mysterious "elegant woman" Angela Forrester in ABC's "Resurrection," include USA's "Royal Pains", "The Good Wife", "The Mentalist", "Ugly Betty", "Law & Order: Criminal Intent", "Law & Order: SVU", "Damages", "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip", "CSI", "Law & Order", "The Practice", "Ally McBeal", Stephen Bochco's "Murder One" (ABC), and the PBS Broadcast of the Emmy Award winning "Sondheim! The Birthday Concert," the 2000 and 2002 Kennedy Center Honors (CBS.)
Murphy's additional starring television performances include Darlene Garretti on CBS' "Made in Jersey" alongside Janet Montgomery and Kyle McLaughlin, the steely Denise Goodman on TNT's "Trust Me" with Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanaugh, Heather Olshansky in CBS' "Hack" opposite David Morse, and her critically acclaimed comedic performance as the neurotic psychiatrist Dr. Ruby Stern on ABC's sitcom, "What About Joan." Her television films include Lifetime's "House of Versace," opposite Gina Gershon, Showtime's political drama "The Last Debate,"and Mary Todd Lincoln in "The Day Lincoln Was Shot" (TNT.)
A versatile singer, she can be heard on a number of recordings including Tangled (Disney Soundtrack), The People in the Picture (Kritzerland), LoveMusik (Ghostlight), Wall to Wall Sondheim (Symphony Space), Wonderful Town (DRG), Leonard Bernstein's New York (Nonesuch), Hello Again (RCA Victor), The King and I (Varese Sarabande), the Grammy Award winning Passion (Angel), and Over the Moon: The Broadway Lullaby Project, to benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and Young Survival Coalition.
Ms. Murphy, born in Queens, New York and raised in Hauppauge, New York and Topsfield, Massachusetts, studied with the legendary Stella Adler and at the Lee Strasberg Institute. For her contribution to the Arts, Culture and Public life, she's received special honors from New York Magazine, Symphony Space, Urban Stages, The Abingdon Theater Company, Greenwich Village's Caring Community, the Women's Project, The Little Orchestra Society, Irish America Magazine, the Breukelein Institute and Emerson College. She donates her time and efforts to a number of organizations, including the Worldwide Orphan's Foundation, Berwin Lee London New York Playwrights, Inc., The Drama League, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and The Actors Fund. She is the proud mother of one daughter and two stepdaughters, and happily resides in New York City.- Actress
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Lillian Diana Gish was born on October 14, 1893, in Springfield, Ohio. Her father, James Lee Gish, was an alcoholic who caroused, was rarely at home, and left the family to, more or less, fend for themselves. To help make ends meet, Lillian, her sister Dorothy Gish, and their mother, Mary Gish, a.k.a. Mary Robinson McConnell, tried their hand at acting in local productions. Lillian was six years old when she first appeared in front of an audience. For the next 13 years, she and Dorothy appeared before stage audiences with great success. Had she not made her way into films, Lillian quite possibly could have been one of the great stage actresses of all time; however, she found her way onto the big screen when, in 1912, she met famed director D.W. Griffith. Impressed with what he saw, he immediately cast her in her first film, An Unseen Enemy (1912), followed by The One She Loved (1912) and My Baby (1912). She would make 12 films for Griffith in 1912. With 25 films in the next two years, Lillian's exposure to the public was so great that she fast became one of the top stars in the industry, right alongside Mary Pickford, "America's Sweetheart".
In 1915, Lillian starred as Elsie Stoneman in Griffith's most ambitious project to date, The Birth of a Nation (1915). She was not making the large number of films that she had been in the beginning because she was successful and popular enough to be able to pick and choose the right films to appear in. The following year, she appeared in another Griffith classic, Intolerance (1916). By the early 1920s, her career was on its way down. As with anything else, be it sports or politics, new faces appeared on the scene to replace the "old", and Lillian was no different. In fact, she did not appear at all on the screen in 1922, 1925 or 1929. However, 1926 was her busiest year of the decade with roles in La Bohème (1926) and The Scarlet Letter (1926). As the decade wound to a close, "talkies" were replacing silent films. However, Lillian was not idle during her time away from the screen. She appeared in stage productions, to the acclaim of the public and critics alike. In 1933, she filmed His Double Life (1933), but did not make another film for nine years.
When she returned in 1943, she appeared in two big-budget pictures, Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942) and Top Man (1943). Although these roles did not bring her the attention she had had in her early career, Lillian still proved she could hold her own with the best of them. She earned an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role of Laura Belle McCanles in Duel in the Sun (1946), but lost to Anne Baxter in The Razor's Edge (1946).
One of the most critically acclaimed roles of her career came in the thriller The Night of the Hunter (1955), also notable as the only film directed by actor Charles Laughton. In 1969, she published her autobiography, "The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me". In 1987, she made what was to be her last motion picture, The Whales of August (1987), a box-office success that exposed her to a new generation of fans. Her 75-year career is almost unbeatable in any field, let alone the film industry. On February 27, 1993, at age 99, Lillian Gish died peacefully in her sleep at her Manhattan apartment in New York City. She never married.- Muriel Kirkland was born on 19 August 1903 in Yonkers, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Secret of the Blue Room (1933), Little Man, What Now? (1934) and Hold Your Man (1933). She was married to Staats Cotsworth. She died on 26 September 1971 in New York City, New York, USA.
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Thespian Betty Field was born in Boston on February 8, 1916, the daughter of a salesman and his wife. Ancestors on her father's side were Mayflower colonists Priscilla and John Alden. Her parents divorced while she was still young and Betty eventually learned to speak Spanish while traveling with her mother to various Spanish-speaking countries during her childhood. Mother and daughter settled in Newton, Massachusetts, after the mother remarried. Betty's passion for the theatre was sparked during her early teens and by 1932 she was enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Art. She made her professional debut in a 1933 summer stock production of "The First Mrs. Fraser" and soon was cast in stage roles elsewhere. She even found work in a London theater production of "She Loves Me" in early 1934.
Rather plaintive in appearance with flat but highly distinctive tones, Betty's Broadway debut came about as an understudy in the comedy "Page Miss Glory" in November of 1934, courtesy of George Abbott, in which Betty also had a minor role. Therafter she performed frequently in the comedy mold, and in the service of Abbott, with such delightful plays as "Three Men on a Horse (1935), "Boy Meets Girl" (1936) "Room Service" (1937) and "The Primrose Path (1939), and earning fine reviews for the last two.
After seeing her performance on stage as Henry Aldrich's girlfriend Barbara in "What a Life" (1938), Paramount executives utilized her services when they transferred What a Life (1939) to film. The studio not only liked what they saw but signed her to a seven-year contract. Throughout the 1940s Betty appeared in a variety of leading ingénue and co-star roles. The important part of Mae, the farm girl, in John Steinbeck's classic Of Mice and Men (1939) starring Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney was an early highlight, although it didn't provide her the necessary springboard for stardom. Part of the problem was that the rather reserved actress tended to shun the Hollywood scene (she still lived quietly with her mother).
While performing for Abbott again on Broadway in "Ring Two" (1939), Betty met the show's playwright Elmer Rice and the couple married in 1942. Their three children, John Alden, Judith and Paul, would appear on occasion with their mother on the summer stock stage. Betty also enhanced husband Rice's plays "Flight to the West" (1940) and "A New Life" (1943), which were designed especially for her.
Betty offered consistent, quality work even when the movies she appeared in met with less-than-stellar reviews. She was afforded the opportunity to work with some of Hollywood's finest leading men, including Fredric March in Victory (1940) and Tomorrow, the World! (1944), John Wayne in The Shepherd of the Hills (1941), Robert Cummings in Flesh and Fantasy (1943) and Joel McCrea in The Great Moment (1944). Tops on the list was her heart-tugging performance as the anguished daughter victimized by father Claude Rains in the classic soaper Kings Row (1942).
She purposely did not renew her Paramount contract at this point and, following another sterling performance in The Southerner (1945), took a long break from camera work. Back on Broadway, she appeared in such distinguished plays as "The Voice of the Turtle" and her husband's "Dream Girl" (Rice also directed) for career sustenance. She won the New York Drama Critics Circle award for the latter in 1946. Her Hedvig in Ibsen's "The Wild Duck" was also critically lauded.
An isolated return to Paramount to play what should have been a career highlight ended up a major disappointment,. While her Daisy Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1949) had mixed reviews (some felt she was miscast and not glamorous enough for the part), the movie itself (which was extensively trimmed) and her underwhelming co-star Alan Ladd were also cited as problems. Still a marquee value on Broadway, however, she displayed great range in such fare as "Twelfth Night", "The Rat Race", "Peter Pan" (taking over for Jean Arthur), "The Fourposter" (she and Burgess Meredith replaced Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn) and "Ladies of the Corridor"
Betty's soulful features took on a hardened, careworn veneer by the time she returned to Hollywood in the mid-1950's. Nevertheless, she had a "Field" day as a character player appearing in a number of drab, dressed-down roles. She lent credence to a number of fascinatingly flawed small-town moms and matrons in films, among them cream-of-the-crop hits Picnic (1955), starring Kim Novak, Bus Stop (1956) with Marilyn Monroe and Peyton Place (1957) headlining Lana Turner and Hope Lange. The stage plays "The Seagull", "Waltz of the Toreadors", "Touch of the Poet" and "Separate Tables" also accentuated this newly mature phase of her career.
TV took up a large percentage of Betty's time in the 1950s and 1960s with a number of showcase roles. She continued at a fairly steady pace but without much fanfare (as she preferred). Divorced from Rice in 1956, she married and split from lawyer and criminologist Edwin J. Lukas before settling down permanently with husband/artist Raymond Olivere in 1968. Betty's swan song in films was a small, featured part in Clint Eastwood's Coogan's Bluff (1968) as a floozie type, looking noticeably older than she was. Mixing in such stalwart, brittle roles on stage as Amanda in "The Glass Menagerie" and Birdie in "The Little Foxes", she made one of her last theater appearances in the difficult role of the mother in "The Effect of Gamma Rays on "Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" in 1971.
Betty suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage in Hyannis, Massachusetts in 1973, just as she was about to leave and film The Day of the Locust (1975). Cast in the flashy role of "Big Sister", an evangelist, her part was taken over by Geraldine Page. At age 57, Hollywood lost a somewhat undervalued talent who enjoyed the work more than the stardom that often accompanied it.- Additional Crew
- Actress
- Casting Department
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- Writer
Eliza Kelley started acting at the age of 5 when a neighbor asked her to be in a local commercial he was producing. She continued in theatre in elementary school and eventually auditioned for and was accepted to a performing arts magnet high school in Atlanta, GA. In college she chose to focus on her languages and became a martial artist. Upon returning to acting after helping build a school, Eliza quickly turned from theatre to film and TV, working on independent projects, military projects, commercials, voice-overs, and true crime re-enactments. Eliza is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, has experience with weapons, riding horses, as well as scuba diving and is fluent in German and Spanish.- Actress
- Anna Brungardt is known for Fuzz & Malloy (2012), Something Past in Front of the Light and The Tale of the Possessed Pick (2013).
- Vivi Janiss was born on 29 May 1911 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. She was an actress, known for Lux Video Theatre (1950), Ben Casey (1961) and TV Reader's Digest (1955). She was married to John Larch and Robert Cummings. She died on 7 September 1988 in Los Angeles, California, USA.