Pat Carroll (actress)
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Patricia Ann Carroll (born May 5, 1927 in Shreveport, Louisiana) is an Emmy Award-winning American actress. As a somewhat heavy-set character actress,[citation needed] she has appeared in many TV programs beginning in the 1950s (playing Cindy Williams' mother on Laverne and Shirley, for example) and stage productions, but is known for her roles as the voice of Ursula in The Little Mermaid and the voice of Morgana, Ursula's sister in The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. Pat will also be doing Ursula in the upcoming The Little Mermaid III which is due to come out in 2007.
[edit] Biography
Carroll was born in Shreveport, Louisiana to Kathryn Angela and Maurice Clifton Carroll. Her family moved to Los Angeles, CA when Pat was five. She graduated from Immaculate Heart High School, an all-girls Catholic school, in Hollywood. For college she attended Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles (the college closed in 1981) and Catholic University of America.
In 1956, Carroll won an Emmy Award for her work on Caesar's Hour and was a regular on the sitcom Make Room for Daddy. She appeared on many variety shows of the 1950s and 1960s, such as The Red Buttons Show, The Danny Kaye Show, The Red Skelton Show, and The Carol Burnett Show. In 1965, she co-starred as Prunella, one of the stepsisters in the Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella television special starring Lesley Ann Warren. Carroll scored a personal and artistic success in the late 1970s with her one woman show on Gertrude Stein titled Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein winning several major theater awards and even a Grammy in 1981 for her recorded version of the performance.
Since the late 1980s she has done much voice over work on animated programs such as A Pup Named Scooby Doo, Galaxy High, and A Goofy Movie. On Pound Puppies she play the series villain, Katrina Stoneheart on the Hanna Barbera version of their TV show. On two Garfield television specials (A Garfield Christmas and Garfield's Thanksgiving), she voiced Jon's feisty Grandma. She has portrayed the sea witch Ursula in many forms of media, such as the Kingdom Hearts series of video games, the Fantasmic! show at two Disney theme parks, and the spin-off TV series. She provided the voice of Ursula once again for the puppet in Disneyland's Parade of Dreams.
Carroll has also appeared on a variety of game shows, including Celebrity Sweepstakes, You Don't Say, To Tell the Truth, Password, and Hollywood Connection.
Taking a break from various villains she's played, her most recent voice over role was the kind and compassionate character of Granny in the re-release of Hayao Miyazaki's warm hearted story My Neighbor Totoro.
She has also had a successful career in the theater, particularly in numerous off-Broadway productions. In 1990 she stunned the theater world with an acclaimed performance in The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Shakespeare Theater at the Folger playing a male role, Sir John Falstaff, playing a balding knight with whiskers.
Drama critic Frank Rich of The New York Times wrote: "Her performance is a triumph from start to finish, and, I think, a particularly brave and moving one, with implications that go beyond this one production. Ms. Carroll and Mr. Kahn help revivify the argument that the right actresses can perform some of the great classic roles traditionally denied to women and make them their own. It's not a new argument, to be sure; female Hamlets stretch back into history. But what separates Ms. Carroll's Falstaff from some other similar casting experiments of late is that her performance exists to investigate a character rather than merely as ideological window dressing for a gimmicky production."
As a member of The Actors Studio Pat Carroll is currently working in stage productions. Her past work includes not only off-Broadway productions but the Kennedy Center and national tours.
In 2005 she played a homeless woman in three episodes of the television series ER.
In 2007, she became a first lady headmaster of Intercontinental Television in Houston, Texas.
[edit] Personal life
As a devout Catholic, her religious views inform her choice of what roles to accept, and in which productions to appear. According to a Current Biography article, she is a supporter of the US Republican Party.[citation needed]
She is the mother of two daughters, Kerry and Tara Karsian.
