Peg Phillips

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Peg Phillips (September 20, 1918 - November 7, 2002) was born Margaret Linton in Everett, Washington.

She was an American actress who started acting professionally in her late 60s after retiring from a career as an accountant. She was the wife of a Navy man stationed in the Territory of Hawaii during Pearl Harbor.

She had wanted to be an actress since age 4 and had done dinner theater as a hobby throughout the years. Her first role was in a film in 1985, but after that she did not appear again until 1990.

In 1990 she started her best known role playing Ruth-Anne Miller on Northern Exposure. The character had been intended to be intermittent, but she became a regular character in time. After Northern Exposure she did several guest roles, especially on 7th Heaven. Her last role was a guest spot on ER in 2000. She also served as Artistic Director in a theater in Woodinville, Washington until her death.

Her life outside of acting included surviving polio, peritonitis, and a ruptured aorta. At Christmastime in 1999, she suffered a broken hip and a broken wrist when a car knocked the elderly (81) actress down in a shopping-center parking lot.

She had been divorced twice and had four children in total. Two children predeceased her, and she was survived by two daughters. The elder daughter, Rev. Elizabeth Greene, is a minister in Boise, Idaho. Peg Phillips had eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Like her Northern Exposure character, Ruth-Anne Miller, she was a smoker from an early age (13). She died from lung disease (some sources erroneously indicated lung cancer) in Seattle, aged 84.

Her funeral was a Unitarian service.