Elizabeth Ashley

Elizabeth Ashley, born Elizabeth Ann Cole on August 30, 1939, in Ocala, Florida, is an American actress whose career in theatre, film, and television spans seven decades. Raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, by her mother Lucille Ayer and father Arthur Kingman Cole, a music teacher, Ashley left Louisiana State University after her freshman year and relocated to New York City. There she trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre alongside future actresses Jessica Walter and Brenda Vaccaro, supporting herself during that period by working as a showroom model and appearing as the Jell-O pudding girl on a television program.

Ashley made her Broadway debut in 1959 and went on to earn a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1962, along with a Theatre World Award the same year, for her performance in Take Her, She's Mine. The following year she originated the role of Corie in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, directed by Mike Nichols, earning a Tony nomination for the performance. The production ran for four consecutive years on Broadway. During its run, Ashley experienced a mental breakdown and checked into a psychiatric hospital, an episode initially reported publicly as bronchitis. She ultimately left the production permanently, paying producer Saint Subber $35,000 as a breach-of-contract penalty, a decision she later said she regretted given her admiration for Nichols.

After approximately a decade working in Hollywood, Ashley returned to Broadway in 1974 in the American Shakespeare Theatre's revival of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, taking on the role of Maggie the Cat. Critics responded strongly to the performance; John Simon wrote that she performed with uncanny precision, Mel Gussow noted that she richly conveyed the complexities of the character, and Clive Barnes suggested she was still undersold despite the extensive praise. The role earned her a third Tony nomination. Her subsequent Broadway credits include The Skin of Our Teeth, Ring Round the Bathtub, Caesar and Cleopatra, Agnes of God, in which she played Dr. Livingstone, and a replacement turn as Mattie Fae in the original Broadway run of August: Osage County. Ashley's Broadway career extended from 1959 through 2014, and in 2024 she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Her film career began with The Carpetbaggers in 1964, for which she received both BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for her supporting performance. Her co-star in that film was George Peppard, who became her second husband and with whom she had a son, Christian. Additional film credits include Ship of Fools and The Third Day, both from 1965, The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971), Rancho Deluxe (1975), Coma (1978), the controversial Windows (1980), in which she played the villain, Paternity (1981), Dragnet (1987), and Vampire's Kiss (1989).

On television, Ashley played Kate in the NBC miniseries Sandburg's Lincoln in the mid-1970s and appeared in the 1987 miniseries The Two Mrs. Grenvilles. She received an Emmy nomination in 1991 for her work on Evening Shade, the Burt Reynolds series on which she was a cast member from 1990 to 1994, playing Aunt Frieda Evans. Her television work also includes 14 episodes of the HBO series Treme as Aunt Mimi, recurring appearances in In the Heat of the Night as Maybelle Chesboro, and guest roles across a wide range of series including Ben Casey, Route 66, Miami Vice, Law and Order, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, The Larry Sanders Show, Homicide: Life on the Night, Russian Doll, and Better Things, among others. She appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 24 times.

Ashley has been married and divorced three times. Her first husband was actor James Farentino. Her second marriage, to George Peppard, ended in divorce in circumstances that were rumored, though never confirmed, to have contributed to the cancellation of his television series Banacek. Her third husband was James McCarthy; they married in 1975 and divorced in 1981. Ashley's autobiography, Actress: Postcards from the Road, was published in hardcover by M. Evans and Co. on June 1, 1978, with a paperback edition following in October 1979 through Fawcett Publications.