Life and Career
Wilson was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the daughter of Marie Ethel (née Welter) and Henry Dunning Wilson, who was an insurance agent. Wilson attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, then studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. She made her Broadway debut in Picnic in 1953. Her stage credits include Desk Set, The Good Woman of Szechuan, Sticks and Bones, Uncle Vanya, Threepenny Opera, The Importance of Being Earnest, Morning's at Seven, You Can't Take It with You, Ah, Wilderness!, and A Delicate Balance.
Wilson made her screen debut reprising her stage role in the 1955 film adaptation of Picnic. Additional credits include The Goddess, A Child is Waiting, The Birds, The Graduate, Catch-22, The Day of the Dolphin, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, Nine to Five, Grace Quigley, Regarding Henry, The Tunnel of Love,, Nora's Christmas Gift (made by Bonneville Productions and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), The Addams Family, and Quiz Show. She portrayed Franklin Roosevelt's mother, Sara Ann Delano Roosevelt, in Hyde Park on Hudson (2012).
Wilson's television credits include such early anthology series as Kraft Television Theatre, The United States Steel Hour, and Armstrong Circle Theatre. She was a regular on the primetime drama East Side/West Side and sitcom Doc and has appeared in Dark Shadows, Another World, All in the Family, Murder, She Wrote, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
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Famous quotes containing the words life and/or career:
“Glorious bouquets and storms of applause ... are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys. But to move an audience in such a role, to hear in the applause that unmistakable note which breaks through good theatre manners and comes from the heart, is to feel that you have won through to life itself. Such pleasure does not vanish with the fall of the curtain, but becomes part of ones own life.”
—Dame Alice Markova (b. 1910)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (18541900)