Katherine Helmond

Katherine Marie Helmond (July 5, 1929 – February 23, 2019) was an American actress born in Galveston, Texas, to Thelma Louise (née Walker) and Patrick Joseph Helmond, a firefighter. Her career spanned six decades and encompassed stage, film, and television. She was raised by her mother and grandmother, both devout Catholics, after her father left the family. Her mother remarried in 1937 to Marshall Phillips. Helmond attended a Catholic primary school, where she appeared in school plays, and her birth certificate recorded her name with the misspelling "Catherine." She had a younger sister, Jo Ann, born three years later, who died in infancy.

After graduating from high school, Helmond relocated to Houston, Dallas, and eventually New York. She described her training as entirely practical and on the job, and she cleaned toilets and repaired costumes while acting in plays in New York. Her stage debut came in As You Like It, and she began working in New York City in 1955. She later ran a summer theatre in the Catskills for three seasons and taught acting in university theatre programs. Her uncredited television debut came in 1962 on Car 54, Where Are You?, though she did not begin appearing on television regularly until 1973.

Helmond's Broadway career extended from 1969 to 1993. Her performance in Eugene O'Neill's The Great God Brown earned her a Tony Award nomination in 1973 for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Her additional Broadway credits included Don Juan, Private Lives, and Mixed Emotions.

On television, Helmond gained wide recognition playing Jessica Tate, the matriarch of the Tate family, on the ABC sitcom Soap from 1977 to 1981. She received four consecutive Emmy nominations from 1978 to 1981 for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for that role, and she won a Golden Globe for it. From 1984 to 1992, she played Mona Robinson on the ABC sitcom Who's the Boss?, earning Emmy nominations for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 1988 and 1989 and winning a second Golden Globe. She appeared in a 1993 episode of The Upper Hand, the British version of Who's the Boss?. From 1995 to 1997, she starred as Doris Sherman, the eccentric owner of the fictional Orlando Breakers professional football team, on the ABC sitcom Coach. Between 1996 and 2004, she recurred on Everybody Loves Raymond as Lois Whelan, the mother of Debra Barone, and received an Emmy nomination in 2002 for Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for that role. She also guest-starred on The Glades and played Caroline Bellefleur on HBO's True Blood, both in 2010.

Her film work included Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976), Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits (1981), Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985), in which she played the mother of Jonathan Pryce's character, and Garry Marshall's Overboard (1987). She appeared as Emma Borden, the title character's sister, in The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975), and had a guest role in the short-lived 1976 CBS series Spencer's Pilots. In 1983, she studied at the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop. She also voiced the character Lizzie in the Disney/Pixar Cars film franchise between 2006 and 2017.

In her personal life, Helmond married George N. Martin in 1959; they divorced in 1962. She met her second husband, David Richard Christian, in 1962, and they married in New York in 1969 after dating for seven years. They remained married until her death and lived at various times in Los Angeles, New York City, Long Island, and London. Helmond and Christian shared a history as students of Zen. She died on February 23, 2019, from Alzheimer's disease at her home in Los Angeles at the age of 89. Her death was announced publicly one week later.