Millette Alexander

Millette Alexander, born August 11, 1933, in New York, is an American actress and concert pianist whose career has spanned Broadway, daytime television, and the concert stage. Originally drawn to music, Alexander pursued piano performance before redirecting her focus to acting, going on to study theater at Northwestern University.

Alexander's Broadway career ran from 1961 to 1974 and included appearances in Medea and Jason and Come Blow Your Horn. Her stage work coincided with an extensive presence in daytime television, where she became a recognizable figure across multiple long-running serials. In the 1950s, she was offered the lead female role of Sara Lane on The Edge of Night when the series was being cast in 1956, but she declined, unwilling to commit to what would have been an extended, singular role. She later returned to the program in three distinct parts: Gail Armstrong, a commercial artist, from 1958 to 1959; socialite Laura Hathaway Hillyer, wife of Orin Hillyer, from 1966 to 1967; and Laura's long-lost identical twin sister, Julie Hathaway Jamison Hubbard Hillyer, from 1967 to 1968, making it among the first dual roles in daytime television. She also appeared as gun moll Gloria Saxon on the short-lived series From These Roots, and portrayed nurse Sylvia Hill Suker on As the World Turns from 1964 to 1966.

Alexander is perhaps best known to television audiences for her fourteen-year tenure on The Guiding Light, where she played Dr. Sara McIntyre Gantry Werner Blackford Thorpe from January 1969 to January 1983. The role, originally created by actress Patricia Roe, placed Alexander as the adoptive mother of character T.J. Werner, portrayed over the years by T.J. Hargrave, Kevin Bacon, Christopher Marcantel, and Nigel Reed. Her character's marriages included those to Lee Gantry, Dr. Joe Werner, Dean Blackford, and Adam Thorpe, the father of the character Roger Thorpe. Alexander departed the role of her own accord, and her character was written out of the storyline offscreen.

Her exit from The Guiding Light coincided with a deliberate return to her first passion: the piano. Alexander formed a piano duo with partner Frank Daykin, and the pair went on to perform at Paris's Salle Gaveau and three times at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York. Together they recorded two CDs for Connoisseur Society: a recording of Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge, which was named among the American Record Guide's 10 Best New Releases of 1996, and Paris Originals, a collection of twentieth-century French works for four hands.

Beyond performing, Alexander founded Chamber Music Central, a summer chamber music camp for children located in Fairfield County, Connecticut. She has three children — Adam, William, and Jennifer — and several grandchildren. She was formerly the daughter-in-law of Oscar Hammerstein II prior to her divorce.