Gretchen Corbett

Gretchen Hoyt Corbett (born August 13, 1945) is an American actress and theater director. She is primarily known for her roles in television, particularly as attorney Beth Davenport on the NBC series The Rockford Files, but has also had a prolific career as a stage actress on Broadway as well as in regional theater.

A native of Oregon and the great-great-granddaughter of Oregon U.S. Senator Henry W. Corbett, she spent her early life in Camp Sherman and Portland, where she graduated from the Catlin Gabel School. Corbett studied drama at Carnegie Mellon University before making her stage debut in a production of Othello at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She subsequently appeared in lead roles on Broadway in After the Rain (1967) and Forty Carats (1968), opposite Julie Harris. She also starred off-Broadway in the title role of Iphigenia in Aulis (1968), and as Joan la Pucelle in Shakespeare's Henry VI, staged at Central Park's Delacorte Theater in 1970. She starred as Jeanne d'Arc in The Survival of St. Joan between 1970 and 1971.

She made her feature film debut in the comedy Out of It (1969), followed by a supporting role in the cult horror film Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971). In 1972, Corbett signed a contract with Universal Studios, and appeared in numerous television films and series for the studio, while simultaneously working in summer stock theater on the East Coast. Between 1974 and 1978, she starred as the idealistic attorney Beth Davenport on the NBC series The Rockford Files, opposite James Garner. Corbett subsequently starred in the horror film Jaws of Satan (1981), and the drama Million Dollar Infield (1982), directed by Hal Cooper.

For the majority of the 1980s, Corbett appeared in guest-starring roles on numerous television series, including Cheers (1983) and Magnum, P.I. (1981–1983), and starred in the short-lived Otherworld (1985). In 1988, she starred in the original workshop stage production of The Heidi Chronicles for the Seattle Repertory Theatre. She later had minor parts in the films Without Evidence (1995) and A Change of Heart (1998). Since the 2000s, Corbett has served as the artistic director of the Portland-based Haven Project, a theater project serving underprivileged children, and appeared in numerous stage productions at the Portland Center Stage as well as the city's Third Rail Repertory. She returned to television with a recurring character on the IFC series Portlandia in 2013, and had a guest-starring role on the Hulu series Shrill in 2019.

Gretchen Hoyt Corbett was born August 13, 1945. Corbett's year of birth is variously given as 1947 and 1945. in Portland, Oregon to Henry Ladd Corbett, Jr. and Katherine Minahen (née Coney) "Kay" Corbett. She is a great-great-granddaughter of Oregon pioneer, businessman, and Senator Henry Winslow Corbett, and granddaughter of Henry Ladd Corbett, a Portland civic leader, businessman, and politician. The community of Corbett, Oregon is named for her great-great-grandfather. Through her paternal ancestry, she is of English descent, with ancestors originating from Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk. Corbett has two brothers and one sister.

Corbett's father, tired of the city, relocated the family to rural Camp Sherman, Oregon, where she spent her early life. "I rode my horse to school every day, four miles each way," she recalled in a 1985 interview. "I hated it then, but, in retrospect, it was a marvelous life and a great way to grow up." The family eventually returned to Portland in her later childhood, where her mother worked as an administrator at the University of Portland. At age seven, Corbett was inspired to become an actress after attending the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Corbett attended the Catlin Gabel School in Portland, and as a teenager apprenticed with the Carnival Theatre camp at the University of Oregon. She studied drama at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Tech (before its merger with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to form Carnegie Mellon University in 1967), but dropped out after her first year of studies to begin working as a full-time actress.

Corbett made her stage debut as Desdemona in a production of Othello at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1966. She subsequently appeared in productions with the New Orleans Repertory Theater in 1967. This same year, she was cast as Sonya Banks in the Broadway production of After the Rain with Alec McCowen. In 1968, she appeared in The Bench at the Gramercy Arts Theatre, and in the title role in Iphigenia in Aulis at the Circle in the Square Theatre, opposite Irene Papas. She subsequently co-starred with Julie Harris in the Broadway production of Forty Carats, staged at the Morosco Theatre.