Gretchen Corbett

Gretchen Hoyt Corbett, born August 13, 1945, in Portland, Oregon, is an American actress and theater director whose career has spanned Broadway, regional theater, film, and television. A great-great-granddaughter of Oregon U.S. Senator Henry Winslow Corbett — for whom the community of Corbett, Oregon is named — she grew up partly in rural Camp Sherman before her family returned to Portland, where she attended the Catlin Gabel School. As a teenager she apprenticed with the Carnival Theatre camp at the University of Oregon, and she later studied drama at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, leaving after her first year to pursue acting professionally. Her interest in the stage had been sparked at age seven by a visit to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where she would eventually make her professional debut in 1966, playing Desdemona in a production of Othello.

Corbett's Broadway career ran from 1967 to 1972. She was cast as Sonya Banks in After the Rain in 1967, opposite Alec McCowen, and the following year co-starred with Julie Harris in Forty Carats at the Morosco Theatre. Her third Broadway credit was Moonchildren. Away from Broadway during this period, she took on the title role in Iphigenia in Aulis at the Circle in the Square Theatre in 1968, opposite Irene Papas, and played Joan la Pucelle in a production of Shakespeare's Henry VI at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park in 1970. Between 1970 and 1971 she starred as Jeanne d'Arc in The Survival of St. Joan in New York, and she also appeared in The Government Inspector alongside David Dukes and John Glover at The Phoenix Theatre.

Corbett made her feature film debut in the 1969 comedy Out of It, co-starring with Jon Voight, and followed that with a supporting role in the cult horror film Let's Scare Jessica to Death in 1971. In 1972 she signed a contract with Universal Studios, becoming one of the studio's last contract players, and relocated to Los Angeles. Under that contract she guest-starred in a range of network series, including Columbo, Gunsmoke, and Banacek. In 1974 she joined the cast of NBC's The Rockford Files, playing attorney Beth Davenport, the idealistic lawyer and sometime romantic partner of private investigator Jim Rockford, portrayed by James Garner. She appeared in 33 episodes across four seasons, departing at the end of the fourth season following a dispute between the show's producers and Universal. During her time on the series she also appeared in a PBS televised production of Knuckle in 1975 as part of Hollywood Television Theater, and played Penny in a PBS production of George Kelly's The Fatal Weakness opposite Eva Marie Saint and Dennis Dugan.

Following her departure from The Rockford Files, Corbett starred in the horror film Jaws of Satan in 1981 and the drama Million Dollar Infield in 1982, directed by Hal Cooper. That same year she played Roxane in a production at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. Throughout the 1980s she took guest-starring roles on series including Magnum, P.I. and Cheers, and in 1985 starred in the short-lived science fiction series Otherworld. In 1988 she appeared in the original workshop production of Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles at the Seattle Repertory Theatre. She later had roles in the films Without Evidence in 1995 and A Change of Heart in 1998.

Since the 2000s Corbett has served as artistic director of the Haven Project, a Portland-based theater initiative serving underprivileged children. She has also performed in numerous productions at Portland Center Stage and the city's Third Rail Repertory. She returned to television with a recurring role on the IFC series Portlandia beginning in 2013 and appeared in a guest role on the Hulu series Shrill in 2019.