Patricia Elliott

Patricia Elliott (July 21, 1938 – December 20, 2015) was an American actress whose work spanned Broadway, film, television, and daytime soap opera. Born in Gunnison, Colorado to Clyde and Lavon (née Gibson) Elliott, she traced her lineage to President Ulysses S. Grant, John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts, and Mary Lyon, founder of what became Mount Holyoke College. Elliott graduated from South High School in Denver before earning her degree from the University of Colorado in 1960. She subsequently trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and built her early stage experience at regional institutions including the Cleveland Play House, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.

Elliott made her screen debut in 1968 in the science fiction film The Green Slime, the same year she began her Broadway career. Her stage work over the following two decades included starring roles in 13 Rue de l'Amour and Tartuffe, as well as appearances in A Month of Sundays, The Elephant Man, and The Shadow, among other productions. Her most celebrated Broadway achievement came in 1973, when she originated the role of Countess Charlotte Malcolm in Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. That performance earned her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance, and a Theatre World Award, all in 1973. She played Dorine in the 1977 Circle in the Square revival of Molière's Tartuffe, receiving a Drama Desk Award nomination for the role, and reprised the performance when the production was adapted for PBS television in 1978. Elliott's Broadway career extended through 1987.

Her film credits include Birch Interval (1976), Somebody Killed Her Husband (1978), and Natural Enemies (1979). On television, she appeared in the 1973 made-for-TV adaptation of The Man Without a Country and portrayed Minnie Adams in The Adams Chronicles, a thirteen-episode PBS miniseries broadcast in 1976. She guest starred on series including Kojak, the ABC Afterschool Special, St. Elsewhere, and Spenser: For Hire. Beginning in 1988, Elliott took on the recurring role of Renée Divine Buchanan on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live, assuming the part from its originator, Phyllis Newman, and continuing in the role until 2011.

Elliott married Christopher V. H. Fay on September 10, 1960, in Clinton, Connecticut; the marriage later ended in divorce. She was also briefly married to Peter Heath. She died in Manhattan on December 20, 2015, at the age of 77, from leiomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer.