Shirley Knight
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| Shirley Knight | ||||||||||
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| Birth name | Shirley Enola Knight | |||||||||
| Born | July 5 1936 Image:Flag of the United States.svg Goessel, Kansas, U.S. | |||||||||
| Other name(s) | Shirley Knight Hopkins | |||||||||
| Years active | 1959-present | |||||||||
| Spouse(s) | John Hopkins 1969-1998 Gene Persson 1959-1969 | |||||||||
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Shirley Enola Knight (born July 5 1936, Goessel, Kansas) is an American actress who made her film debut in 1959. The following year she was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and again, in 1962, for her role as Paul Newman's sweetheart in Sweet Bird of Youth.
She also appeared in Sidney Lumet's The Group (1966), Richard Lester's Petulia (1968) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969).
In the 1960s she abandoned Hollywood in favor of the Broadway stage, but she has since returned to film as Helen Hunt's mother in As Good As It Gets, and to television in a number of programs, including as Faith Ford's mother in Ford's failed sitcom Maggie Winters, and on series such as Murder, She Wrote, Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Desperate Housewives as Bree Hodge's mother-in-law Phyllis Van De Kamp. She also made a guest appearance in House M.D., season 1, episode 8, as an elderly patient. But perhaps her most impressive role was in the first segment of If These Walls Could Talk with Demi Moore, co-written and directed by Nancy Savoca. The series about the various faces of abortion had the then highest rating of any HBO series.
She has two daughters, Kaitlin Hopkins and Sophie Hopkins, by two different marriages, both are also actors. Sophie is daughter of the writer John Hopkins. She will once again join the recurring role as Bree's former mother in law In Desperate Housewives in season four.
[edit] Selected filmography
- The Other Side of the Tracks (2008) - Helen
- Open Window (2006) - Ann
- Grandma's Boy (2006) - Bea
- Locked In (2005) Marianne
- To Lie in Green Pastures (2005) - Peggy
- Sexual Life (2005) - Joanna
- Thanks to Gravity (2005) - Lea
- Ghost Cat (2003) - Mrs. Ashboro
- Angel Eyes (2001) - Elenora Davis
- As Good as It Gets (1997) - Beverly Connely
- Little Boy Blue (1997) - Doris Knight
- Death In Venice, CA (1994) - Mona Dickens
- Color of Night (1994) - Edith Niedelmeyer
- Endless Love (1981) - Ann Butterfield
- Playing For Time- (1980)- Frau Lagerfuhrerin Maria Mandel
- Flight from Ashiya (1964) - Caroline Gordon
- Five Gates to Hell (1959) - Sister Maria
[edit] External links
- Shirley Knight at the Internet Movie Database
- Shirley Knight at the TCM Movie Database
- Shirley Knight at the Internet Broadway Database
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Categories: Articles lacking sources from October 2007 | All articles lacking sources | 1936 births | American film actors | American television actors | Emmy Award winners | Living people | People from Kansas | Kansas actors | Tony Award winners | Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (television) | American film actor, 1930s birth stubs
