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Shirley Knight
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Enjoying a career that spans almost five decades, Shirley Knight is one of those actors that always put a special touch on her work. She was nominated for Academy Awards in SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH opposite Paul Newman and DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS with Robert Preston. Bringing her expertise to the screen playing Helen Hunt’s mother in AS GOOD AS IT GETS and one of the original members of THE DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD, Knight proves there is no such thing a “small role.” She has raised the quality of viewing on the small screen as well winning a Golden Globe and Emmy for INDICTMENT:THE McMARTIN TRIAL and Emmys for “thirtysomthing” and NYPD.
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Shirley Knight has been in so many plays, films and TV shows, and has been awarded or nominated so many times in her 50-year career, it's amazing hers is not a household name. She's been nominated for two Oscars (as Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress), won two of her three Emmy awards in the same year (1995), has earned two Golden Globes and won one Tony award.
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Born in Goessel, Kansas, the daughter of oil company executive Noel Johnson and Virginia (Webster) Knight, Shirley Knight showed her performing talent from an early age. Raised in Lyons, Kansas, she made her first radio appearance at eight years old singing "Alice Blue Gown" with Horace Heidt's big band. After attending Phillips University and Wichita State University, Knight headed to New York where she studied with famed German director Erwin Piscator and noted acting teacher Lee Strasberg. Her first TV appearance came on NBC's Matinee Theater, and in 1958 she was a regular on the western Buckskin, playing ?Mrs. Newcomb.? Knight made her big screen debut in 1959 in Five Gates to Hell, and she went on to earn Academy Award nominations for The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Sweet Bird of Youth.
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Tony Award winner Shirley Knight will star in Deborah Grimberg's comedy Cycling Past the Matterhorn, which will play a limited, 12-week engagement at The Harold Clurman Theatre (410 West 42nd Street on Theatre Row) beginning September 20. The production, directed by Eleanor Holdridge, will officially open on September 29.
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An expert at playing disturbed, modern women, Ms. Knight trained at the Pasadena Playhouse before making her film debut in Five Gates to Hell (1959). Still a relative newcomer to film, she astounded viewers with her accomplished performances in “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” (1960) and “Sweet Bird of Youth” (1962), both of which earned her Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress.
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Shirley Enola Knight (born July 5, 1936, Goessel, Kansas) is an American actress who made her film debut in 1959. The following year she was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and again, in 1962, for her role as Paul Newman's sweetheart in Sweet Bird of Youth.
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Shirley Knight