Cherry Jones

Cherry Jones
Jones at 24's season 7 finale screening, 2009
Born	(1956-11-21) November 21, 1956 Paris, Tennessee, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1980–present
Partner(s)	Sarah Paulson (2004–2009)[1]

Cherry Jones (born November 21, 1956) is an American actress and recipient of the 2009 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress – Drama Series and the 1995 and 2005 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play. Most recently, she starred as Dr. Evans on NBC series Awake.

Career

Jones may be best known for her role as President Allison Taylor on the Fox series 24, for which she won an Emmy. However, most of her career has been in the theatre on Broadway, including her Tony-winning lead performances in Lincoln Center's 1995 production of The Heiress and John Patrick Shanley's play Doubt, a role which earned her the 2005 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play. The play opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre in March 2005.

Other Broadway credits include Nora Ephron's play Imaginary Friends (with Swoosie Kurtz); Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, the 2000 revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten, and Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good, for which she earned her first Tony nomination.^[2] She is considered to be one of the foremost theater actresses in the United States.^[3]

She has narrated the audiobook adaptations of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series including, Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, Farmer Boy, On the Banks of Plum Creek, By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter and Little Town on the Prairie. In recent years, Jones has ventured into feature films. Her screen credits include Cradle Will Rock, The Perfect Storm, Signs, Ocean's Twelve and The Village.^[4]

Jones played President Taylor on the Fox series 24, a role for which she won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.^[5] She played the role in the seventh season as well as eighth season, which began airing in January 2010 and concluded in May 2010.^[6]

In 2012, Jones starred in the NBC drama series Awake as psychiatrist Dr. Judith Evans.

Cherry Jones is currently portraying Amanda Wingfield in the Loeb Drama Center's revival of Tennessee William's "The Glass Menagerie" alongside Zachary Quinto, Brian J. Smith and Celia Keenan-Bolger.^[7]

Personal life

Jones was born in Paris, Tennessee, to a high school teacher mother and a flower shop owner father.^[8] She is a 1978 graduate of the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. While at CMU, she was one of the earliest actors to work at City Theatre, a prominent fixture of Pittsburgh theatre.^[9]

In 1995, when Jones accepted her first Tony Award, she thanked her then girlfriend, architect Mary O'Connor. When she accepted her Best Actress Tony in 2005 for her work in Doubt, she thanked "Laura Wingfield", the Glass Menagerie character being played in the Broadway revival by Jones's girlfriend, actress Sarah Paulson.^[10] The pair had attended the awards together and kissed right after Jones won. In 2007, Paulson and Jones declared their love for each other in an interview with VelvetPark at Women's Event 10 for the LGBT Center of New York.^[11]

Paulson and Jones ended their relationship amicably in 2009.^[12]

Filmography

Film

Television

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cherry Jones.

• Cherry Jones at the Internet Broadway Database
• Cherry Jones at the Internet Movie Database
• Cherry Jones at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Cast Out: Queer Lives in Theater (U. Michigan Press, edited by Robin Bernstein) republishes the interview in which Cherry Jones first publicly discussed her sexuality.
• Cherry Jones - Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org
• TonyAwards.com Interview with Cherry Jones