Morgan Fairchild

Morgan Fairchild, born Patsy Ann McClenny on February 3, 1950, in Dallas, Texas, is an American actress who has worked across television, film, and stage for more than five decades. Her parents were Edward Milton McClenny and Martha Jane Hartt, a high school English teacher at Richardson High School in Richardson, Texas. Fairchild has a younger sister, Cathryn Hartt, who also pursued acting. As a child, she appeared on WFAA's Mr. Peppermint Show with host Jerry Haynes, and as a teenager she was in the audience on WFAA's Sump'n Else bandstand program, auditioning three times for its dance group, The Little Group. She also appeared in locally broadcast commercials on Dallas-Fort Worth television stations during that period. She adopted the professional first name Morgan from the 1966 David Warner film Morgan - A Suitable Case for Treatment.

Fairchild's earliest screen work came in 1967, when she served as a body double for Faye Dunaway during the production of Bonnie and Clyde, specifically in driving scenes that required operating a stick-shift vehicle. She subsequently relocated to New York City, where she landed her first credited role as Jennifer Pace on the CBS daytime soap opera Search for Tomorrow, a part she held from 1973 to 1977. During the mid-1970s she also made episodic appearances on primetime series including Kojak, Happy Days, Police Woman, and The Bob Newhart Show, as well as several episodes of CBS Radio Mystery Theater.

In 1978, Fairchild became the first actress to portray Jenna Wade on the primetime soap opera Dallas, appearing in a single episode. That same year she had a recurring role on the sitcom Mork and Mindy and appeared in the television film The Initiation of Sarah. Her first regular primetime role came in 1980, when she was cast as Constance Weldon Carlyle on NBC's Flamingo Road. The series was canceled after two seasons, but her performance earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama. Following that cancellation, she made guest appearances on Hotel, Simon and Simon, Magnum P.I., and The Love Boat, and starred in the theatrical film The Seduction in 1982.

In 1984, Fairchild co-hosted the ABC special Blondes vs. Brunettes alongside Joan Collins and co-starred in the primetime soap opera Paper Dolls as modeling agency owner Racine, a series canceled partway through its first season. The following year she joined the cast of Falcon Crest, playing attorney Jordan Roberts from 1985 to 1986, and appeared in the miniseries North and South and its 1986 sequel. Also in 1985, Jon Lovitz introduced the recurring Saturday Night Live character Tommy Flanagan, a pathological liar whose running claim was that his wife was Morgan Fairchild. In 1989, a guest appearance on Murphy Brown earned Fairchild a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. In the early 1990s she took on a recurring role in Roseanne, playing Sandra Bernhard's bisexual girlfriend Marla. She appeared as herself in the comedy films Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult in 1994, Holy Man in 1998, and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story in 2007.

In 1994, Fairchild appeared in an advertising campaign for Old Navy alongside Joan Collins, a campaign that proved successful enough for the company to produce multiple sequels. In 1995, she returned to daytime television as Sydney Chase on The City, remaining in the role for approximately a year before appearing on General Hospital. She also became a recurring guest on the sitcom Cybill as Andrea, a rival to Cybill Shepherd's character, and appeared on Friends as Nora, the mother of Chandler Bing. Later television credits include guest roles on Two and a Half Men, Chuck, Bones, Revenge, Hot in Cleveland, and The Bold and the Beautiful. In 2005, she competed on the VH1 reality series But Can They Sing?, and in 2006 she was cast as Sophia Blakely on the MyNetworkTV series Fashion House.

In 2003, Fairchild brought her career to Broadway, appearing in The Graduate in the role of Mrs. Robinson, the stage adaptation of the celebrated film. In 2017, she returned to daytime television for a limited run on Days of Our Lives as Anjelica Deveraux, a role that earned her a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Performer in a Drama Series. In 2022, she guest-starred in two episodes of General Hospital as Haven de Havilland. In October 2023, it was announced that Fairchild would appear in the Lifetime film Ladies of the '80s: A Divas Christmas, alongside Loni Anderson, Linda Gray, Donna Mills, and Nicollette Sheridan.

Beyond her performance career, Fairchild has been an activist for causes including AIDS awareness and environmentalism, and has publicly discussed living with a mild form of the chronic illness ME/CFS, including delivering a speech on the subject at a briefing for the National Academy of Medicine in 2015. She is a board member of SAG-AFTRA. Fairchild was previously married to Jack Calmes from 1967 to 1973.