Caroline McWilliams

Caroline Margaret McWilliams (April 4, 1945 – February 11, 2010) was an American actress born in Seattle, Washington, who went on to build a career spanning stage, television, and film across five decades. She grew up in Barrington, Rhode Island, and earned a bachelor's degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1966.

McWilliams established her Broadway presence between 1970 and 1975, appearing in the musical Boccaccio, the drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and the musical The Rothschilds. Her stage work also included productions with the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, and the New York Shakespeare Festival.

Her television career began in the late 1960s, when she joined the cast of the CBS daytime drama Guiding Light, playing Janet Mason Norris from 1969 until 1975. She appeared in nine episodes of the ABC comedy-drama Soap during its second season in 1978, portraying a character named Sally. When Soap's spinoff series Benson premiered in 1979, McWilliams joined that cast as Marcy Hill, the role for which she became most widely recognized, remaining with the series until 1981. The show wrote her character out by having her depart with her husband, a role played by Ted Danson. She also held a recurring role on the NBC soap opera Another World as Tracy DeWitt and appeared on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light as Janet Norris. On Beverly Hills, 90210, she recurred as the mother of Jamie Walters's character, Ray Pruit. In 1977, she appeared on Barney Miller as a prostitute who marries an immigrant to help him remain in the country. Her many other television credits included Kojak, Quincy M.E., The Incredible Hulk, Hill Street Blues, Night Court, St. Elsewhere, Cagney and Lacey, Home Improvement, Murphy Brown, and Judging Amy, among others. In 1989, she played the ghostly wife Clair Pritchard in the short-lived comedy series Nearly Departed.

McWilliams starred in the 1982 CBS pilot Cass Malloy, which aired as a standalone broadcast that summer without leading to a regular series. The pilot nonetheless served as the basis for the syndicated series She's the Sheriff, which ran from 1987 to 1989 with Suzanne Somers in the lead role. Her television movie credits included The Death of Ocean View Park (1979), Rage! (1980), The Gift of Life (1982), and Sworn to Silence (1987). On the feature film side, she appeared in White Water Summer (1987) as Virginia Block and in Mermaids (1990) as Carrie.

In her personal life, McWilliams was married to and later divorced from actor Michael Keaton, with whom she had a son, Sean. She and Keaton shared two grandchildren through their son. McWilliams died of multiple myeloma at her home in Los Angeles, California, on February 11, 2010, at the age of 64.