QUICK FACTS
Activity Actress
Real name Susan Antonia Williams Stockard
Nationality USA
Born February 13, 1944 (New York, New York, USA)
BIOGRAPHY
Susan Williams Antonia Stockard was born on February 13, 1944 in New York City, New York, USA. She
studied History and Literature at Radcliffe College in Massachusetts and graduated in 1965. Channing began her acting career in the Theater Company Boston Experimental; She performed in the Off-Broadway productions that the group performed in 1969 . Channing made her television debut on Sesame Street in the role of the female victim of the Number Painter. She played her first starring role in the 1973 television movie, The Girl Most Likely to… , a black comedy written by Joan Rivers .
After some small parts in feature films, Channing co-starred with Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson in Mike Nichols’ The Fortune (1975). In 1977, at the age of 33, Channing was cast in the role of high school teenager Betty Rizzo in the hit musical Grease . The film was released in 1978 and her performance earned her the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Supporting Actress.
She helped create the role of Ouisa Kittredge in the stage and film versions of Six Degrees of Separation , for which she was nominated for a Tony Award and for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won the 1985 Tony Award for Best Actress for the Broadway staging of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg .
From 1999 to 2006 she played First Lady Abbey Bartlet on the NBC television series The West Wing , for which she won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. In 2005, Channing won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in a Family/Children’s/Youth Special, for Jack (2004), a Showtime TV film about a young man who struggles to understand why his father left the family for another man .
Also in 2005, Channing starred in Out of Practice with Henry Winkler, receiving an Emmy nomination for her role. She later played the role of Lydia Barnes, ex-wife of Stewart Barnes (Winkler), and mother of two sons and a daughter (Christopher Gorham, Paula Marshall, Ty Burrell). The show aired for one season of 22 episodes.
Since 2012, Channing played a recurring role on The Good Wife, playing the role of the main character’s mother, Veronica Loy, until the final season in 2016.
