Lizbeth MacKay

Lizbeth MacKay is an American actress born on March 7, 1949, in Buffalo, New York, the daughter of Robert J. MacKay, a salesman, and Alice MacKay, a dancer. She holds degrees from Adelphi University and the Yale Graduate School of Drama. MacKay has two children, Caitlin and John, and is known professionally as Liz.

MacKay launched her stage career at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, in 1970, the same year she made her Broadway debut in a production of Othello. Between 1975 and 1978, she was a regular presence at The Cleveland Play House, where her credits included Man and Superman, Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Relatively Speaking, Of Mice and Men, Great Expectations, and Little Foxes. She played Alice in You Can't Take It with You at Center Stage in Baltimore in 1979, and in 1983 appeared in both Crimes of the Heart at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles and The Dining Room at the Plaza Theatre in Dallas.

Her Off-Broadway debut came in 1980 at the Manhattan Theatre Club, where she originated the role of Lenny Magrath in Crimes of the Heart. She brought that performance to Broadway the following year, and in 1982 received the Theatre World Award for the role. Her additional New York City stage credits span several decades and include Death and the Maiden (1992), Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1993), The Heiress (1995), The Price (1999), Two-Headed at the Women's Project Theater (2000), The Shoemaker (2010), Sons of the Prophet (2011), All My Sons (2008), Picnic, and The Humans, with her Broadway career extending from 1970 through 2016.

Beyond New York, MacKay starred opposite Katherine Helmond in a 1998 production of Night, Mother at the Orpheum Theatre in Foxboro, Massachusetts, for which she received an Elliot Norton Award. Later that year she appeared in A View From the Roof at Barrington Stage Company and the Orpheum Theatre. In 2008 she performed in Wendy Wasserstein's Third, presented by the Philadelphia Theatre Company.

MacKay's screen work spans both film and television. Her feature film credits include Malcolm X (1992), Marvin's Room (1996), and One True Thing (1998). On television she portrayed Leora Sanders on All My Children in 1981 and later appeared on One Life to Live in 2004. Her primetime credits include The Cosby Mysteries (1995), Ed (2000), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2002), Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2005), and multiple episodes of the original Law & Order across 1992, 1998, and 2003.