Michele Lee

Michele Lee, born Michelle Lee Dusick on June 24, 1942, in Los Angeles, California, is an American actress, singer, dancer, producer, and director. The daughter of Sylvia Helen Silverstein and Jack Dusick, a makeup artist, she attended Alexander Hamilton High School before launching a career that would span Broadway, film, and television across more than six decades.

Lee's Broadway debut came in 1960 with Vintage 60, followed by How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in 1962, for which she also recorded the original cast album on RCA Victor. She appeared in the original Broadway cast recording of Bravo Giovanni on Columbia Masterworks that same year. Her stage work in the early 1960s led directly to her film debut, when she reprised her role in the 1967 film adaptation of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Two additional film appearances followed in quick succession: the Disney production The Love Bug in 1968, opposite Dean Jones, which became the second-highest-grossing film of 1969 in the United States, and The Comic in 1969, opposite Dick Van Dyke. Also in 1969, she starred in a television production of the Jerome Kern–Otto Harbach musical Roberta, in which she performed "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," and charted at number 52 on the Billboard Hot 100 with "L. David Sloane." She released two solo albums on Columbia Records during the 1960s: A Taste of the Fantastic Michele Lee, arranged by Ray Ellis, and L. David Sloane And Other Hits Of Today, arranged by Bill Justis.

Lee returned to Broadway in Seesaw, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical in 1974 and winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance that same year. The Seesaw original cast recording was released on Buddah Records in 1973. After a period of reduced professional activity following personal circumstances, she became a frequent television guest performer throughout the 1970s, appearing on programs including Marcus Welby, M.D., Night Gallery, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, and The Match Game, among others.

In 1979, Lee accepted the role of Karen Fairgate on Knots Landing, a spin-off of Dallas. The series ran for 14 seasons, from 1979 to 1993, totaling 344 episodes, all of which Lee appeared in — the only cast member to achieve that distinction. Her character later became Karen Fairgate MacKenzie after marrying the character M. Patrick MacKenzie, played by Kevin Dobson, in 1983. Lee was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1982 and won the Soap Opera Digest Award for Best Lead Actress three times, in 1988, 1991, and 1992. In 1983, she took on a prominent storyline centered on prescription drug dependency at the urging of the show's writers and producers. Six years into the series, she directed her first of several episodes. She also participated in the 1997 reunion miniseries Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac.

Following the conclusion of Knots Landing, Lee expanded her work behind the camera. She produced the television biographical film Big Dreams and Broken Hearts: The Dottie West Story and became the first woman to star in, direct, and produce a Lifetime television movie with Color Me Perfect in 1996. In 1998, she portrayed novelist Jacqueline Susann in the television biopic Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story.

Lee returned to Broadway in 2000 in The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 2001. In 2004, she appeared in the feature film Along Came Polly. She also appeared in the Broadway productions Chance & Chemistry and Wicked, playing Madame Morrible in the latter when she returned to the show in 2015; the Madame Morrible cast recording from that production is also part of her discography. In 2025, Lee reunited with Knots Landing co-stars Joan Van Ark and Donna Mills for the episodic podcast We're Knot Done Yet, available on platforms including Podbean, YouTube, and Spotify.

On the personal side, Lee met actor James Farentino in 1963 on the set of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and married him in 1966. The couple have a son, David Farentino, and divorced in 1983. Since 1987, she has been married to writer and producer Fred Rappaport.