Rochelle Oliver

Rochelle Oliver (April 15, 1937 – April 13, 2024) was an American actress and acting coach born in New York, New York. A student of Uta Hagen, Oliver built a career spanning stage, television, and film over several decades, while also establishing herself as a long-tenured educator in the New York acting community.

Oliver's stage work brought her to Broadway between 1960 and 1966, with credits including Toys in the Attic, Happily Ever After, Harold, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Her performance in Toys in the Attic earned her a Clarence Derwent Award in 1960. Prior to her Broadway appearances, she had performed in stage productions of The Brothers Karamazov, The Cave Dwellers, and The Diary of Anne Frank.

Her television career began in 1958 with an appearance in the Naked City episode "Saw My Baby There." In 1963, she portrayed Jean Lowell in "The Noose," an episode of The Defenders. She took on a recurring role as Barbara Lamont in the 1970 series The Best of Everything, and from 1993 to 2003 she appeared as Judge Grace Larkin in Law & Order. On film, she played Dr. Marsha in Paul Mazursky's 1976 feature Next Stop, Greenwich Village.

Oliver began teaching acting in the 1970s and remained on the faculty of HB Studio in New York City until her death. In 1959, she married actor James Patterson, with whom she had a son; the two remained together until Patterson's death in 1972. In 1997, she married actor Fritz Weaver, and they remained together until his death in 2016. Oliver died in New York City on April 13, 2024, two days before what would have been her 87th birthday.