Mariette Hartley

Mariette Hartley, born Mary Loretta Hartley on June 21, 1940, in Weston, Connecticut, is an American actress whose career spans film, television, and stage. The daughter of Paul Hembree Hartley, an account executive, and Mary "Polly" Ickes Watson, a manager and saleswoman, Hartley grew up in Weston, an affluent Fairfield County suburb within commuting distance of Manhattan. Her maternal grandfather was John B. Watson, the American psychologist who founded the school of behaviorism. Hartley graduated from Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut, in 1957, where she participated in the school theater group, Staples Players, and later earned a degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1965.

Hartley's involvement in theater began at age thirteen at the White Barn Theatre in Norwalk, Connecticut. During her teenage years she received coaching and mentorship from actress Eva Le Gallienne, and she also worked at the American Shakespeare Festival. While still a student at Staples, she contacted screenwriter Rod Serling to invite him to speak to her class; Serling accepted, and years later cast her in the Twilight Zone episode "The Long Morrow," crediting their earlier meeting as the reason.

Her film career opened with an uncredited appearance in the 1958 Western From Hell to Texas, followed by her first credited role alongside Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea in Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962), for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination. She went on to appear in Drums of Africa (1963), Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964) alongside Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery, and John Sturges' Marooned (1969). In the 1970s she appeared in two Westerns with Lee Van Cleef, Barquero (1970) and The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972).

Television became a central part of Hartley's career from the 1960s onward. She played Dr. Claire Morton in 32 episodes of the ABC soap opera Peyton Place beginning in 1965, and appeared five times in the CBS Western series Gunsmoke, including the title role in the episode "Cotter's Girl" in 1962. She also guest-starred in Star Trek as Zarabeth, Spock's love interest, in the season three episode "All Our Yesterdays," which aired on March 13, 1969. Her television work in the 1970s included appearances in Columbo, The Streets of San Francisco, Little House on the Prairie, and two episodes of Columbo — "Publish or Perish" (1974) and "Try and Catch Me" (1977) — in which she played similar characters in both installments. In 1977 she appeared in the TV movie The Last Hurrah, earning her first Emmy Award nomination. The following year, her portrayal of psychologist Dr. Carolyn Fields in the Incredible Hulk episode "Married," in which her character weds Bill Bixby's alter ego, won her the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She received another Emmy nomination for her work on The Rockford Files in 1979. In 1983, Hartley reunited with Bixby in the sitcom Goodnight, Beantown, which ran for two seasons and brought her an additional Emmy nomination. She co-hosted CBS's The Morning Program alongside Rolland Smith for ten months in 1987.

Later television credits include recurring roles as Sister Mary Daniel in One Life to Live from 1999 to 2001 and as Lorna Scarry in six episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit between 2003 and 2011, as well as guest appearances on Murder, She Wrote, Nash Bridges, and NCIS. From 1995 to 2015, she hosted the television documentary series Wild About Animals. In January 2018, she began a recurring role on the Fox drama 9-1-1 as Patricia Clark, the Alzheimer's-afflicted mother of dispatcher Abby Clark, played by Connie Britton.

Hartley's Broadway career extended from 1993 to 2001 and included four productions. She starred in The Sisters Rosensweig, Deathtrap, and Copenhagen, and also appeared in Cabaret. Her work on Deathtrap was part of a touring revival in which she performed alongside Elliott Gould and Doug Wert before the production reached Broadway.

Beyond Broadway, Hartley continued her stage work in other venues. In 2006 she wrote and performed a one-woman show, If You Get to Bethlehem, You've Gone Too Far, in Los Angeles. In 2014 she played Eleanor of Aquitaine opposite Ian Buchanan as Henry in the Colony Theater Company's production of James Goldman's The Lion in Winter. In 2022, she and her husband Jerry Sroka, whom she married in 2005, co-wrote and starred in the romantic comedy Our Almost Completely True Story, based on their lives together.

Among Hartley's most widely recognized commercial work was a series of Polaroid camera advertisements she made with James Garner in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The two actors' on-screen chemistry led many viewers to believe they were married, a misconception Hartley addressed humorously in her 1990 autobiography, Breaking the Silence, written with Anne Commire. In that book she also discussed her struggles with psychological difficulties, tracing family dysfunction to her grandfather Dr. Watson's application of his behavioral theories within his own family. Hartley has spoken publicly about her experience with bipolar disorder, co-founded the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and serves as the foundation's national spokesperson. She received an honorary degree from Rider College in 1993.