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Holland Taylor

 
Actor: Holland Taylor
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  • Born: Jan 14, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: '80s-2000s
  • Major Genres: Comedy, Comedy Drama
  • Career Highlights: Happy Accidents, Two and a Half Men: Season 04, Two and a Half Men: Season 01
  • First Major Screen Credit: My Mother Was Never a Kid (1981)

Biography

Philadelphia-born actress Holland Taylor majored in drama at Bennington College, and arrived in New York in 1966, hoping to take the theater world by storm. That didn't quite happen, despite Taylor making her Broadway debut in The Devils, starring Anne Bancroft, and working with Alan Bates in Butley (she was also in that notorious failure, Moose Murders). A protégée of legendary acting teacher Stella Adler, Taylor endured 14 years of disappointments interspersed with the occasional success, and played in one heavily hyped television series (CBS's Beacon Hill) that failed in less than a season, all of it broken up by work in the daytime drama The Edge of Night.

Finally, in 1980, lightning struck when Taylor was cast in the series Bosom Buddies in the role of Ruth Dunbar, the acid-tongued advertising agency executive employing the two protagonists of the program, played by Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari. Taylor accepted the part despite some initial reluctance, mostly thanks to Adler's urging, but she proved almost as much of a breakout personality onscreen as Hanks and Scolari. Taylor took lines written with venom and added her own wry twists to their meanings and inflections, and made all of her scenes memorable. The series only lasted two full seasons, but when it folded, Taylor was being offered television and movie roles on a steady basis. Most of her subsequent series didn't last more than a season each, but Taylor's parts, usually as charmingly acerbic middle-aged women, stayed big and got larger, up through programs such as The Naked Truth, starring Téa Leoni.

Taylor's big-screen appearances have included supporting roles in such diverse films as The Truman Show, Spy Kids 2, Legally Blonde, George of the Jungle, Romancing the Stone, The Jewel of the Nile, How to Make an American Quilt, Fame, She's Having a Baby, and To Die For. She's also had some choice parts in made-for-television movies, including playing Nancy Reagan in The Day Reagan Was Shot, but Taylor's most successful medium remains the television series. In recent years, she has proved a mainstay of producer David E. Kelley's stable of actors, taking on the recurring role of Judge Roberta Kittleson, a Boston jurist whose sex-drive is a match for her legal intellect, in the series The Practice (with a cross-over appearance in the same role on Ally McBeal), winning an Emmy for her work on the show's 1999 season. That series, which has included an episode featuring Taylor in a semi-nude scene, has not only given the middle-aged actress a chance to explore sides of her screen persona that other producers never even considered, but has transformed her into a sex symbol among the ranks of mature actresses, right up there with Kathleen Turner as Mrs. Robinson in the stage version of The Graduate. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
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Holland Taylor

Taylor at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival
Born January 14, 1943 (1943-01-14) (age 66)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation Actress
Years active 1969—present

Holland Taylor (born January 14, 1943) is an American actress known for her film, television and theatre work. Her television roles include Ruth Dunbar in Bosom Buddies, Dean Susan McMann on Saved by the Bell: The College Years, Judge Roberta Kittleson in The Practice and Evelyn Harper in Two and a Half Men.

Contents

Early life

Taylor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1943, the daughter of Virginia, a painter, and C. Tracy Taylor, an attorney.[1] She is the youngest of three girls in the family and her sisters are Patricia and Pamela. Taylor attended high school at Westtown School, a Quaker boarding school then majored in drama at Bennington College in 1964, before moving to New York City to become an actress[2].

Career

Taylor's long career began in the theater. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s she appeared in numerous Broadway and off-Broadway productions, including starring roles in Butley and A. R. Gurney's The Cocktail Hour. Taylor also has the dubious distinction of having starred in Broadway's most infamous flop, Moose Murders, where she filled in, with less than a week's rehearsal, for veteran character actress Eve Arden who had jumped from the sinking ship. [3]

In 1983 Taylor had one of her greatest theatrical moments in Breakfast with Les and Bess, which prompted legendary New York magazine theater critic John Simon to sing, "...Miss Taylor is one of the few utterly graceful, attractive, elegant and technically accomplished actresses in our theater...seeing her may turn you, like me, into a Taylor freak..." [4]

On television, from 1978 to 1979 Taylor was cast as the purely evil Denise Cavanaugh on the long running soap opera, The Edge of Night. Encouraged by her acting coach, Stella Adler, Taylor took two roles that would make her well known: alongside Tom Hanks in the 1980s sitcom Bosom Buddies, and a supporting role in the 1984 film Romancing the Stone. After several years of traveling between California and New York, she finally decided to move permanently to California. The actress' rising fame, built slowly over many years, led her to roles that made her a well known name in the industry. She proved herself to be equally adept both at comedy and at drama[5].

She also starred from 1992 to 1993 in Norman Lear's The Powers That Be with John Forsythe and David Hyde Pierce, from 1995 to 1998 on The Naked Truth. She played the recurring role of Judge Roberta Kittleson on The Practice from 1998 to 2003, for which she was nominated for two Emmys, winning one for best supporting actress. In her Emmy speech, she brought the house down when she lifted the Emmy over her head and said, "Overnight!" Taylor thanked David E. Kelley, The Practice's producer/writer and creator, for "giving me a chariot to ride up here on: A woman who puts a flag on the moon for women over 40—who can think, who can work, who are successes, who can cook, and who can COOK!"[citation needed] She has had an Emmy-nominated supporting role on the TV series Two and a Half Men since its inception in 2003, playing Evelyn Harper, the snobbish, overbearing mother of the two main characters Charlie and Alan.

Taylor again played a legal professional in the 2001 movie Legally Blonde, a comedy in which she played a tough Harvard law professor. From 1999 to 2001, she played the Hedda Hopper-esque Letitia Devine on The Lot, for which she was also nominated for an Emmy. Other guest roles include appearances on ER, Veronica's Closet, and recurring roles on Monk and as billionaire Peggy Peabody on The L Word.

Prudence, the castle's majordomo and love interest of the Grand Duke, in Disney's Cinderella II and Cinderella III: A Twist in Time is her only animated role.

Taylor's first love remains the theater and when not at work on Two and a Half Men, she spends her time finishing the extensive research and writing of a one-woman play about the late Texas Governor Ann Richards, which will have its first production in 2009. [5]

Emmy Award nominations

Filmography

Film

Television

  • Love Is a Many Splendored Thing (1967) .... Trish Wanamaker (1971)
  • Somerset (1970) .... Sgt. Ruth Winter (unknown episodes, 1973)
  • Beacon Hill (1975) .... Marilyn Gardiner (unknown episodes)
  • Kojak .... Elizabeth (1 episode, 1977)
  • The Edge of Night (1976) .... Denise Norwood Cavanaugh, R.N. (1977-1978, 1980)
  • ABC Afterschool Special .... Felicia Martin (1 episode, 1981)
  • Bosom Buddies .... Ruth Dunbar (21 episodes, 1980-1981)
  • All My Children (1970) .... Jill Ollinger (unknown episodes, 1981-1982)
  • The Love Boat .... Kathy Brighton (1 episode, 1983)
  • Kate & Allie .... Linda Cabot (1 episode, 1984)
  • Me and Mom (1985) .... Zena Hunnicutt (unknown episodes)
  • Harry (1987) .... Ina Duckett, R.N. (unknown episodes)
  • Perfect Strangers .... Olivia Crawford (1 episode, 1987)
  • CBS Summer Playhouse .... Fran Grogan / ... (2 episodes, 1987-1989)
  • Murder, She Wrote .... Winifred Thayer (1 episode, 1989)
  • Wiseguy .... Allison Royce / ... (1 episode, 1990)
  • Going Places .... Dawn St. Clare (3 episodes, 1990-1991)
  • The Powers That Be .... Margaret Powers (20 episodes, 1992-1993)
  • Saved by the Bell: The College Years .... Dean Susan McMann (7 episodes, 1993-1994)
  • Diagnosis Murder .... Agent Gretchen McCord (2 episodes, 1994-1995)
  • The Naked Truth .... Camilla Dane (2 episodes, 1995-1998)
  • Something So Right .... Abigail (1 episode, 1996)
  • Veronica's Closet .... Millicent (2 episodes, 1998)
  • Buddy Faro .... Olivia Vandermeer (1 episode, 1998)
  • ER .... Phyllis Farr (1 episode, 1999)
  • The Lot (1999) .... Letitia DeVine (unknown episodes)
  • The 51st Annual Primetime Emmy Awards (1999) (TV) .... Herself
  • Ally McBeal .... 2nd Woman in Face Bra Infomercial / ... (2 episodes, 1999-2000)
  • Strong Medicine .... Lillian Pynchon (1 episode, 2000)
  • DAG .... Katherine Twigg (1 episode, 2000)
  • The Living Edens .... Narrator (1 episode, 2000)
  • The Fighting Fitzgeralds .... Rose (1 episode, 2001)
  • Strange Frequency .... Marge Crowley (1 episode, 2001)
  • Battery operated boyfriend (2002) .... Madeline Collins (unknown episodes)
  • Disney's Fillmore! .... Mrs. Cornwall (1 episode, 2002)
  • Intimate Portrait .... Herself (2 episodes, 2002-2004)
  • Banzai .... Herself (1 episode, 2003)
  • The Practice .... Judge Roberta Kittleson (29 episodes, 1998-2003)
  • The L Word .... Peggy Peabody (8 episodes, 2004-2008)
  • Big Brother .... Herself (1 episode, 2005)
  • Monk .... Peggy Davenport (2 episodes, 2005-2007)
  • The 58th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards (2006) (TV) .... Herself
  • The 33rd Annual People's Choice Awards (2007) (TV) .... Herself
  • Two and a Half Men .... Evelyn Harper / ... (60 episodes, 2003-present)

Theater

Broadway

  • "Breakfast with Les and Bess"
  • "Moose Murders"
  • "Murder Among Friends"
  • "Butley" (Alan Bates)
  • "Something Old, Something New"
  • "We Interupt this Message"
  • "The Devils" (Anne Bancroft)

Off-Broadway

Regional

Los Angeles

  • "The Unexpected Man" The Geffen Playhouse
  • "Kinder Transport" The Tiffany Theatre
  • "Narrator -- LA Philharmonic “Persephone, Stravinski, Essa-Pekka Salonen, Conductor"
  • "Narrator -- LA Philharmonic “Ahknaten, Philip Glass, John Adams, Conductor"

References

  1. ^ Holland Taylor Biography (1843-)
  2. ^ http://hollandtaylor.net/hollandtaylor.htm
  3. ^ http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=9400E3DF133BF930A15751C0A965948260
  4. ^ [1]
  5. ^ a b http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/arts/television/05rhod.html

External links

v • d • e
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress - Drama Series

Ellen Corby (1976) · Kristy McNichol (1977) · Nancy Marchand (1978) · Kristy McNichol (1979) · Nancy Marchand (1980) · Nancy Marchand (1981) · Nancy Marchand (1982) · Doris Roberts (1983) · Alfre Woodard (1984) · Betty Thomas (1985) · Bonnie Bartlett (1986) · Bonnie Bartlett (1987) · Patricia Wettig (1988) · Melanie Mayron (1989) · Marg Helgenberger (1990) · Madge Sinclair (1991) · Valerie Mahaffey (1992) · Mary Alice (1993) · Leigh Taylor-Young (1994) · Julianna Margulies (1995) · Tyne Daly (1996) · Kim Delaney (1997) · Camryn Manheim (1998) · Holland Taylor (1999) · Allison Janney (2000)

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