Jane Elliot

Jane Elliot is an American actress born on January 17, 1947, in New York City, the daughter of an attorney. Her birth surname is Stein; she adopted the stage name Elliot after a friend who bore that name. She began ballet training at age four and started vocal instruction at fourteen.

Elliot's performing career began early. At seventeen, while participating in a Summer Abroad program in London, she secured a major role in a television production of Come Back, Little Sheba on British television, an experience that earned her membership in British Equity and led to work on a British television soap opera. Back in the United States, she made her Broadway debut in 1965, portraying Linda Kingsley in The Impossible Years. That casting came directly from her work in the Bucks County Playhouse's production of Hay Fever.

Also in 1965, Elliot entered daytime television with the short-lived ABC soap opera A Flame in the Wind. Her film work followed later in the decade, with an appearance in Change of Habit (1969) alongside Elvis Presley, Mary Tyler Moore, and Barbara McNair, and a subsequent role in One Is a Lonely Number (1972). Throughout the 1970s she accumulated credits in prime time episodic television, appearing in series including The Mod Squad, Kojak, Barnaby Jones, and Police Woman. In 1977 she held a lead role in the NBC series Rosetti and Ryan. In 1987 she appeared in both Some Kind of Wonderful and Baby Boom.

Elliot is best known for her portrayal of Tracy Quartermaine on the ABC daytime soap opera General Hospital, a role she first took on in 1978. During that initial run, one of Tracy's defining scenes involved withholding her father's heart medication while he appeared to be suffering a heart attack. Elliot departed the role in 1980 and received the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for the performance in 1981. That same year she joined the prime time CBS series Knots Landing in the recurring role of Judy Trent.

From 1981 to 1982, Elliot appeared on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light as Carrie Todd, a character involved with Ross Marler who is ultimately revealed to be a murderer with a split personality. Elliot has cited the role of Carrie as among her favorites, noting that it placed the greatest demands on her as a performer. From 1984 to 1986 she played Cynthia Chandler Preston Cortlandt on All My Children, a character who pursued and married the wealthy Palmer Cortlandt, broke up his marriage to Daisy, and carried on a simultaneous relationship with Ross Chandler.

In 1986, producer Gail Kobe approached Elliot to play Stephanie Douglas Forrester on the newly launched CBS soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. Elliot accepted, but on Christmas Eve of that year Kobe informed her that Susan Flannery had been given the part by series creator Bill Bell. Elliot subsequently joined Days of Our Lives from 1987 to 1989 as Anjelica Deveraux, a character married to Harper Deveraux, played by Joseph Campanella, who conducts an affair with the younger Justin Kiriakis, played by Wally Kurth, and becomes pregnant with his child. The storyline grew more complex when Anjelica learns that Harper has always known he was sterile.

Elliot returned to General Hospital in 1989 and in 1991 was reunited on that series with Kurth, who was cast as Tracy's son Ned Ashton. She departed again in mid-1993 and later moved into production, serving as a producer on the 1995 ABC soap opera The City. From 1996 to 1997 she reprised Tracy Quartermaine on The City following a brief return to General Hospital. In 2003 she rejoined General Hospital as a regular cast member. In 2014 she received a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, thirty-three years after her win and twenty-one years after her previous nomination. Elliot announced her retirement in March 2017, though in November 2019 it was announced she would return to General Hospital the following month, and she has made several short-term appearances since, with Tracy's visits written primarily as holiday returns.