Jill Clayburgh

Jill Clayburgh (born April 30, 1944) is an American actress.

Early life

Clayburgh was born in New York City to Julia (née Dorr), a theatrical production secretary for David Merrick, and Albert Henry "Bill" Clayburgh, a manufacturing executive.^[1][2][3] Clayburgh's family was Jewish and upper class;^[4] she was raised in a "fashionable" neighborhood on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where she attended the prestigious Brearley School.^[4] She attended Sarah Lawrence College, where she decided that she wanted to be an actress.

Clayburgh has been married to screenwriter and playwright David Rabe since 1979. They have one son and one daughter, actress Lily Rabe.

Career

Clayburgh joined the Charles Street Repertory Theater in Boston. She appeared in numerous Broadway productions in the 1960s, including The Rothschilds and Pippin. Clayburgh made her screen debut in The Wedding Party, filmed in 1963 but not released until six years later, and gained attention with roles such as that of Gene Wilder's love interest in the 1976 comedy-mystery Silver Streak , co-starring Richard Pryor.

She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for 1978's An Unmarried Woman, for which she won the "Best Actress Award" at the Cannes Film Festival, and for 1979's Starting Over, a comedy with Burt Reynolds. She also received strong notices for a dramatic performance in I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (which co-starred Geraldine Page).

Her other films include Portnoy's Complaint, Gable and Lombard (in which she portrayed screen legend Carole Lombard), as a pro football team owner's daughter in Semi-Tough, as a mathematician in It's My Turn (in which she teaches the proof of the snake lemma) , as a conservative Supreme Court justice in First Monday in October and in La Luna, a controversial role in Bernardo Bertolucci's critically panned film. (It includes a scene in which her character masturbates her son in an attempt to help his heroin addiction.)

Television audiences know Clayburgh from numerous roles in series and movies including The Practice and as Ally McBeal's mother. She received Emmy Award nominations for her work in the made-for-television movie Hustling in 1975 and for guest appearances in the series Nip/Tuck in 2005.

In 2006, she appeared on Broadway in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park with Patrick Wilson and Amanda Peet; she played Peet's mother, a role originated by the late Mildred Natwick. She also returned to the screen as a therapist's eccentric wife in the all-star ensemble dramedy Running With Scissors, an autobiographical tale of teenage angst and dysfunction based on the book by Augusten Burroughs and co-starring Annette Bening, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood, Alec Baldwin and Gwyneth Paltrow. Her next role will be as Pat Nixon in the film Dirty Tricks, directed by Running With Scissors director Ryan Murphy.

During 2007, Clayburgh appeared in the ABC television series Dirty Sexy Money, playing Letitia Darling.

Filmography

References

External links

• Jill Clayburgh at the Internet Movie Database
• Jill Clayburgh at the Internet Broadway Database
• Jill Clayburgh at the Internet off-Broadway Database
• Jill Clayburgh - Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org