Judith Ivey

Judith Lee Ivey, born September 4, 1951, in El Paso, Texas, is an American actress and theatre director whose Broadway career spans from 1979 to 2015. The daughter of Nathan Aldean Ivey, a college instructor and dean, and Dorothy Lee (née Lewis), a teacher, Ivey attended Union High School in Dowagiac, Michigan, from 1965 to 1968, before graduating from Marion High School in Marion, Illinois, in 1970. She subsequently studied at John A. Logan College, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois, where she majored in drama. After marrying Illinois State graduate student Ricardo Gutierrez in 1973 and later divorcing, she relocated to New York in 1978. She is currently married to Tim Braine, and the couple has two children.

Ivey is a two-time Tony Award winner for Best Featured Actress in a Play, receiving the honor for Steaming in 1983 and for Hurlyburly in 1985. The latter production also earned her a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play. She received additional Tony nominations for Park Your Car in Harvard Yard in 1992 and for a revival of The Heiress in 2013. Her broader Broadway credits include The Audience, Follies, A Voice in the Dark, Piaf, Bedroom Farce, Blithe Spirit, and Park Your Car in Harvard Yard, among other productions.

Beyond Broadway, Ivey portrayed Amanda in The Glass Menagerie at the Long Wharf Theatre, a role she reprised in March 2010 at the Roundabout Theatre in New York and at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, earning the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Actress for the performance. In October 2009, she played Ann Landers in the solo play The Lady with All the Answers at the Cherry Lane Theatre off-Broadway, receiving nominations for both the Lucille Lortel Award and the Drama Desk Award for Best Solo Performance. In 2016, she returned to the Cherry Lane Theatre in Israel Horovitz's Out of the Mouths of Babes alongside Estelle Parsons, directed by Barnet Kellman.

Ivey made her feature film debut in the 1984 romantic comedy The Lonely Guy and went on to appear in The Woman in Red (1984), Compromising Positions (1985), Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986), Sister, Sister (1987), The Devil's Advocate (1997), and Women Talking (2022), among other films. On television, she held the lead role of Kate McCrorey in the NBC series Down Home from 1990 to 1991, followed by lead roles in The 5 Mrs. Buchanans (1994–1995) and Dave Chappelle's Buddies (1996). She is widely recognized for her portrayal of Bonnie Jean "BJ" Poteet during the final season of the CBS sitcom Designing Women (1992–1993). Her television work also includes appearances on Will & Grace, Grey's Anatomy, Person of Interest, White Collar, Nurse Jackie, Big Love, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as well as the miniseries Rose Red, based on a screenplay by Stephen King. For her performance in the Hallmark Hall of Fame television film What the Deaf Man Heard (1997), she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. She additionally provided the voice of Eleanor Sherman in the animated series The Critic.