Dixie Carter

Dixie Virginia Carter was born on May 25, 1939, in McLemoresville, Tennessee, to Esther Virginia (née Hillsman) and Halbert Leroy Carter. She spent much of her early childhood in Memphis and later attended the University of Memphis and Rhodes College, where she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority. In 1959, she placed first runner-up to Mickie Weyland in the Miss Tennessee pageant and won the Miss Volunteer beauty pageant at the University of Tennessee that same year.

Carter's professional stage career began in 1960 with a Memphis production of Carousel, in which she appeared alongside George Hearn, whom she would later marry. She moved to New York City in 1963 and took part in a production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. In 1967, she stepped away from acting for eight years to raise her two daughters. She returned to the profession in 1974, initially filling in for actress Nancy Pinkerton as Dorian Cramer on the soap opera One Life to Live before being cast as Assistant District Attorney Olivia Brandeis "Brandy" Henderson on The Edge of Night, a role she held from 1974 to 1976. After departing that series in 1977, she appeared in several episodes of The Doctors as socialite Linda Elliott.

Her Broadway career spanned from 1965 to 2002. She made her Broadway debut in the 1974 musical Sextet and went on to star in the 1976 Broadway revival of Pal Joey, for which she received the Theatre World Award that same year. She returned to Broadway in 1997 to portray Maria Callas in Terrence McNally's play Master Class, a role she performed from January through June, following earlier productions that had featured Zoe Caldwell and Patti LuPone in the part. In 2004, she appeared on Broadway as Mrs. Meers in the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie.

On television, Carter built a substantial career across multiple decades. She appeared in the sitcoms On Our Own from 1977 to 1978, Filthy Rich from 1982 to 1983, and Diff'rent Strokes from 1984 to 1985, among other series. Her most prominent television role came with the sitcom Designing Women, which ran from 1986 to 1993, where she played Julia Sugarbaker, a sharp-tongued interior decorator based in Atlanta. The show was created by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who had also created Filthy Rich. Carter's real-life husband, Hal Holbrook, appeared in a recurring role as attorney Reese Watson, and her daughters Mary Dixie and Ginna Carter made guest appearances as Julia Sugarbaker's nieces in a 1989 episode. From 1999 to 2002, Carter portrayed Randi King on the legal drama Family Law, and during 1999 and 2000 she simultaneously appeared as a regular cast member on the sitcom Ladies Man. In 2006 and 2007, she played Gloria Hodge, Bree Van de Kamp's mother-in-law, on Desperate Housewives, earning a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series at the 59th Emmy Awards.

Carter also worked in voice acting, providing the voice of Necile in the animated feature The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus and appearing in the English-language voice cast of Studio Ghibli's 1999 anime film My Neighbors the Yamadas. Her final film was That Evening Sun, shot in East Tennessee during the summer of 2008 alongside her husband Hal Holbrook. Based on a short story by William Gay and produced by Dogwood Entertainment, the film premiered at South by Southwest, where it competed for the narrative feature grand jury prize.

In her personal life, Carter married businessman Arthur Carter in 1967. The couple had two daughters, Mary Dixie, born in 1968, and Ginna, born in 1970. She and Arthur Carter divorced in 1977, and she married actor George Hearn that same year; they divorced two years later. In 1984, she married actor Hal Holbrook. In 1996, Carter published a memoir titled Trying to Get to Heaven, addressing her life with Holbrook, her time on Designing Women, and her plastic surgery during the show's run. A lifelong Methodist and member of the McLemoresville United Methodist Church, Carter described her political views as libertarian Republican. She died on April 10, 2010, in Houston, at the age of 70.