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Stockard Channing

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Stockard Channing

Stockard Channing (born Susan Antonia Williams Stockard; February 13, 1944) is an American actress. Her accolades include three Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, and a nomination for an Academy Award.

Channing played Betty Rizzo in the film Grease (1978) and First Lady Abbey Bartlet in the NBC television series The West Wing (1999–2006). She also originated the role of Ouisa Kittredge in the stage and film versions of Six Degrees of Separation; the 1993 film version earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Channing won the 1985 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the Broadway revival of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, and won Emmy Awards for The West Wing and The Matthew Shepard Story, both in 2002. She won a Daytime Emmy Award in 2005 for her role in Jack. Her film appearances include The Fortune (1975), The Big Bus (1976), The Cheap Detective (1978), Heartburn (1986), To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), Up Close & Personal (1996), Practical Magic (1998), and Woody Allen's Anything Else (2003). She also played the recurring role of Veronica Loy on the CBS drama The Good Wife (2012–16).

Channing was born in Manhattan, and she grew up on the affluent Upper East Side. She is the daughter of Mary Alice (née English), who came from a large Brooklyn Irish Roman Catholic family, and Lester Napier Stockard (died 1960), who was in the shipping business. Her elder sister is Lesly Stockard Smith, former mayor of Palm Beach, Florida.

Channing is an alumna of the Madeira School in McLean, Virginia, a boarding school for girls, which she attended after starting at the Chapin School in New York City. She studied history and literature at Radcliffe College of Harvard University in Massachusetts and graduated summa cum laude in 1965. She received her acting training at HB Studio in New York City.

Channing started her acting career with the experimental Theatre Company of Boston; she performed in the group's Off-Broadway 1969 production of the Elaine May play Adaptation/Next. She performed in a revival of Arsenic and Old Lace directed by Theodore Mann as part of the Circle in the Square at Ford's Theatre program in 1970. In 1971, she made her Broadway debut in Two Gentlemen of Verona — The Musical, working with playwright John Guare. She also appeared on Broadway in 1973 in a supporting role in No Hard Feelings at the Martin Beck Theatre.

Channing made her television debut on Sesame Street in the role of The Number Painter's female victim. She landed her first leading role in the 1973 television movie The Girl Most Likely To..., a black comedy written by Joan Rivers about an ugly duckling woman, made newly beautiful by plastic surgery after an auto accident, who vows murderous revenge on all who had scorned her. For the role, Channing went through a considerable transformation, with the syndicated column "TV Scout" reporting months later, "It was a great make-up job — at least the part that made very pretty Stockard look so ugly. She had her cheeks puffed out with cotton and her nose was wadded, too, to make it thick and off-center. Very thick eyebrows were drawn on her face and she wore padded clothes to make her look fat. Making her look beautiful was easy."

After some small parts in feature films, Channing co-starred with Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson in Mike Nichols' The Fortune (1975). Despite Channing being tagged "the next big thing" in cinema, and the actress herself considering this some of the best work of her career, the movie did poorly at the box office and did not prove to be the breakthrough role Channing hoped it would be. On May 22, 1977, she, along with Ned Beatty, starred in the pilot for the short-lived TV series Lucan. Lucan, played by Kevin Brophy, is a 20-year-old who has spent the first 10 years of his life running wild in the forest. After being raised by wolves, Lucan strikes out on his own in search of his identity.

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