Carol Mayo Jenkins

Carol Mayo Jenkins is an American actress born on November 24, 1938, in Knoxville, Tennessee. She is best known for her television role as Elizabeth Sherwood, an English teacher at New York City's High School for the Performing Arts in the series Fame. Her career spans stage, television, and academia.

Jenkins received her early training in Knoxville, where her parents first enrolled her in acting lessons at the Bijou Theatre under instructor Irene Hayes Hodges. After withdrawing her from those lessons, they placed her with a second teacher, Mrs. Emily Faust, whose other students included Mary Costa and Patricia Neal. Jenkins later pursued formal training in London at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where she studied for three years. During her time in London, she co-founded Drama Centre London, an institution regarded as one of the leading theatre schools in England.

Her stage career included a touring production of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in which she played Martha across the United States, Russia, and Lithuania, cast in the role by Albee himself. On Broadway, Jenkins appeared in five productions between 1969 and 1980: The Three Sisters, There's One in Every Marriage, Theseus and Hippolyta, First Monday in October, and The Suicide. Her work in The Suicide earned her a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Play in 1978.

On television, Jenkins portrayed Elizabeth Sherwood on Fame through the show's fifth season in 1986, then returned for the series finale the following year. She also appeared in the television series Aaron's Way, Matlock, and Max Headroom.

Following her performing career, Jenkins joined the faculty at the University of Tennessee, where she taught acting from 2001 until her retirement in September 2023. She performed regularly at the Clarence Brown Theatre, with her final appearance there being the 2023 production of Murder on the Orient Express, in which she played Princess Natalya Dragomiroff.