Shirley Enola Knight (born July 5, 1936) is an
American
stage,
screen,
and
television actress. She has been
nominated twice for the
Academy Award for Best
Supporting Actress, in 1960 for
The Dark at the Top of the
Stairs and in 1962 for
Sweet Bird of Youth.
Career
Knight's
feature films include
Sidney Lumet's
The
Group (1966),
Richard
Lester's
Petulia (1968),
Francis Ford Coppola's
The Rain People (1969), and
As Good As It Gets
(1997).
Knight's
theatre credits include
Three Sisters (1964),
We Have Always
Lived in the Castle (1966),
Kennedy's Children
(1975), which earned her the
Tony
Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play, and
A Lovely Sunday for
Creve Coeur (1979). She was nominated for the
Drama Desk
Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play twice, for
Landscape of the Body and
The
Young Man from Atlanta, which also garnered her a Tony
nomination for
Best
Leading Actress in a Play.
Knight's many television credits include
Target: The Corruptors!,
The Eleventh
Hour,
The
Reporter,
Maggie
Winters,
L.A.
Law,
Murder, She Wrote,
Law & Order,
Law & Order: Special
Victims Unit,
House
M.D.,
Crossing
Jordan,
Cold
Case, and
ER, among
others, in addition to many
television
movies, including
Indictment: The McMartin
Trial, for which she won both the
Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a
Movie and the
Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a
Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for
Television. Her guest performance in thirtysomething earned her
a 1988 Emmy for Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series.
She also appeared in the first segment of
If These Walls Could Talk,
the
HBO series about the various faces of
abortion co-written and directed by
Nancy
Savoca, and has played the recurring role of
Bree Hodge's mother-in-law Phyllis Van De Kamp on
Desperate Housewives.
She also appeared in a popular episode from the original
The Outer Limits series
titled '
The Man Who Was Never
Born' co-starring Martin Landau.
Personal life
Knight was
born in Goessel
, Kansas
, the
daughter of Virginia (née Webster) and Noel Johnson Knight, an oil
company executive. Knight was married twice, to
Gene Persson from 1959 until they divorced in
1969, and to
John Hopkins from
1969 until his death in 1998. She has two daughters, actress
Kaitlin and television writer
Sophie.
Additional filmography
References
- http://www.filmreference.com/film/60/Shirley-Knight.html
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search