Shirley Knight

After fifty-plus years of winning awards for her work in drama (including two Oscar® nominations, three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, a Tony, and the Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival), Shirley Knight is enjoying a “second career” in comedy. Born in Gossell, Kansas, Knight grew up in Kansas and began studying to be an opera singer at age eleven. She attended Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma, Wichita State University, and has a Doctor of Fine Arts Degree from Lake Forest College. After studying at the Pasadena Theatre School, she began her film career in 1959. She then went to New York and began her theatre career. She studied acting with Jeff Corey and Lee Strasberg and is a member of The Actor’s Studio. She has received many honors from her home state of Kansas, including the Kansan of the Year award in 2000 and the Governor's Distinguished Artist Award in 2007. She has also been honored by many film festivals including the Rome Film Festival.

She has been nominated for ten Emmy Awards, winning three times: for her guest work on “thirtysomething,” and then, in 1995, winning twice in the same year, for her guest role on “NYPD Blue” and as Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Special for INDICTMENT: THE MCMARTIN TRIAL. Her accomplished stage career includes a Tony Award for “Kennedy’s Children” and a nomination for Horton Foote’s “The Young Man from Atlanta.”

She is one of the few working actors who can claim to have had a play written especially for her by Tennessee Williams (“A Lovely Sunday for Creve Couer”). Onscreen, Knight’s career includes her Oscar-nominated roles in SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH and THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS, as well as films such as THE GROUP; PETULIA; THE RAIN PEOPLE; ENDLESS LOVE; AS GOOD AS IT GETS; DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD; and THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE. On the small screen, her credits include the television films THE LIE, written by Ingmar Bergman; PLAYING FOR TIME, written by Arthur Miller; and THE WEDDING, directed by Charles Burnett; as well as the hit series “Desperate Housewives.”

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