Jane Alexander

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Jane Alexander

Jane Alexander, 2005
Birth name Jane Quigley
Born October 28, 1939 (age 67)
Flag of United States Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Years active 1967-present
Spouse(s) Edwin Sherin (1975-present)
Robert Alexander (1962-1974)
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie
1981 Playing for Time
2005 Warm Springs
Tony Awards
Best Featured Actress in a Play
1969 The Great White Hope

Jane Alexander (b. October 28, 1939), is an award-winning American actress, author, and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Contents

[edit] Life and Career

Jane Alexander was born Jane Quigley in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 19, 1939 to Thomas B. Quigley, an orthopedic surgeon of Irish and German ancestry, and Ruth Elizabeth Pearson, a nurse whose family had migrated from Nova Scotia, Canada. She graduated from Beaver Country Day School, an all girls school in Chestnut Hill, where she discovered her love of acting.[1]

Encouraged by her father to go to college rather than immediately embark on an acting career, Alexander attended Sarah Lawrence in Bronxville, New York, where she concentrated in theater but also studied mathematics with an eye toward computer programming, in the event she failed as an actress. Alexander spent her junior year studying at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, where she participated in the Edinburgh University Dramatic Society. The experience, together with apparently good reviews of her performances, solidified her determination to continue acting.[1]

Alexander met her first husband, Robert Alexander, in the early 1960s in New York City, where both were pursuing acting careers. They had one son, born in 1964, and the couple divorced a few years later. Alexander had been acting regularly in various regional theaters when she met producer/director Edwin Sherin in Washington, DC, where he was serving as the artistic director at Arena Stage. The two became good friends and, once divorced from their respective spouses, became romantically involved, marrying in 1975. Between the two they have four children, Alexander's son Jace, a television director, and Sherin's three sons, Tony, Geoffrey, and Jon, from a previous marriage.[1]

In 1967, Alexander played Eleanor Backman in the original production of Howard Sackler's The Great White Hope at Arena Stage. Like her co-star, James Earl Jones, she went on to play the part both on Broadway (1968), winning a Tony Award for her performance, and in the film version (1970), which earned her an Oscar nomination.[2]

Alexander's additional screen credits include All the President's Men (1976), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), and Testament (1983), all of which earned her Oscar nods, Brubaker (1980), The Cider House Rules (1999), and Fur (2006).

Alexander portrayed Eleanor Roosevelt in two television productions, Eleanor and Franklin and Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years, and FDR's mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt in HBO's Warm Springs with Kenneth Branagh and Cynthia Nixon, winning an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Other television movies include Arthur Miller's Playing for Time, co-starring Vanessa Redgrave, for which Alexander won another Emmy Award; Malice in Wonderland (as famed gossip-monger Hedda Hopper); Blood & Orchids; and In Love and War.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed her chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the organization that had provided partial funding for The Great White Hope at Arena Stage. Alexander moved to Washington, DC and served as chairman of the NEA until 1997. Her book, Command Performance: an Actress in the Theater of Politics (2000), describes her the challenges and difficulties she faced heading the NEA at a time when the 104th U.S. Congress, headed by Newt Gingrich, unsuccessfully strove to shut it down.[1]

Dedicated to world peace, wellness, and wildlife conservation, Alexander serves on the boards of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Project Greenhope, the National Stroke Association, and Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament.

Alexander is a recipient of the Israel Cultural Award and the Helen Caldicott Leadership Award. She is a fellow of the International Leadership Forum.She currently lives with her husband in the suburbs north of New York City.

[edit] Additional Broadway credits

[edit] Academy awards and nominations

  • 1971 Academy Award for Best Actress In A Leading Role (The Great White Hope, nominee)
  • 1977 Academy Award for Best Actress In A Supporting Role (All The President's Men, nominee)
  • 1980 Academy Award for Best Actress In A Supporting Role (Kramer Vs. Kramer, nominee)
  • 1984 Academy Award for Best Actress In A Leading Role (Testament, nominee)

[edit] Broadway awards and nominations

  • 1969 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance (The Great White Hope, winner)
  • 1969 Theatre World Award (The Great White Hope, winner)
  • 1969 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play (The Great White Hope, winner)
  • 1973 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (6 Rms Riv Vu, nominee)
  • 1974 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Find Your Way Home, nominee)
  • 1979 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (First Monday in October, nominee)
  • 1992 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play (The Visit, nominee)
  • 1992 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (The Visit, nominee)
  • 1993 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play (The Sisters Rosensweig, winner)
  • 1993 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (The Sisters Rosensweig, nominee)
  • 1998 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Honour, nominee)

[edit] Emmy Award wins and nominations

  • 1976 Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama or Comedy Special (Eleanor and Franklin, nominee)
  • 1977 Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama or Comedy Special (Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years, nominee)
  • 1981 Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or a Special (Playing for Time, winner)
  • 1984 Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or a Special (Calamity Jane, nominee)
  • 1985 Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or a Special (Malice in Wonderland, nominee)
  • 1999 Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, nominee)
  • 2000 Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series (Law and Order, nominee)
  • 2005 Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie (Warm Springs, winner)

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ a b c d Alexander, Jane. Command Performance: an Actress in the Theater of Politics. PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Book Group; New York, NY, 2000. ISBN 1-891620-06-1. pp1-16
  2. ^ Lawson,"Howard Sackler, 52, Playwright Who Won Pulitzer Prize, Dead;" NYT (The New York Times)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Awards
Preceded by
Mary-Louise Parker
Angels in America		 Emmy Award Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie
2005
Warm Springs		 Succeeded by
Kelly MacDonald
The Girl in the Café
Preceded by
Mare Winningham
Amber Waves		 Emmy Award Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie
1980
Playing for Time		 Succeeded by
Penny Fuller
The Elephant Man
Preceded by
John E. Frohnmayer		 Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts
1993-1997		 Succeeded by
Bill Ivey
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