Catherine Burns is an American actress of stage, film, radio and television. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

 for her performance in Last Summer

Last Summer

Last Summer is a 1969 coming-of-age movie about adolescent sexuality. Director Frank Perry filmed at Fire Island locations: the stars of the film are Catherine Burns, Barbara Hershey, Bruce Davison and Richard Thomas. The memorable performance by Burns brought her an Academy Award nomination for...

(1969).

Career

Born in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, Burns attended Hunter College High School

Hunter College High School

Hunter College High School is a New York City secondary school for intellectually gifted students located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. It is administered by Hunter College, a senior college of the City University of New York. Although it is not operated by the New York City Department of...

, Hunter College

Hunter College

Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...

 and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts

American Academy of Dramatic Arts

The American Academy of Dramatic Arts is a fully accredited two-year conservatory with facilities located in Manhattan, New York City – at 120 Madison Avenue, in a landmark building designed by noted architect Stanford White as the original Colony Club – and in Hollywood, California...

. She made her Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 debut in 1968 in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. In 1970 she won the Theatre World Award

Theatre World Award

The Theatre World Award, first awarded for the 1945-46 season, is an American honor presented annually to actors and actresses in recognition of an outstanding New York City stage debut performance, either on Broadway or off-Broadway.-History:...

 for her performance in the off-Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 play Dear Janet Rosenberg, Dear Mr. Kooning.

Burns made her screen debut in 1969 in Last Summer

Last Summer

Last Summer is a 1969 coming-of-age movie about adolescent sexuality. Director Frank Perry filmed at Fire Island locations: the stars of the film are Catherine Burns, Barbara Hershey, Bruce Davison and Richard Thomas. The memorable performance by Burns brought her an Academy Award nomination for...

as sensitive, conservative Rhoda, receiving critical acclaim and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

. The role also brought her the 1970 Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Her other film credits include Me, Natalie

Me, Natalie

Me, Natalie is a 1969 American comedy-drama film directed by Fred Coe. The screenplay by A. Martin Zweiback is based on an original story by Academy Award-winner Stanley Shapiro, who previously wrote Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back, and That Touch of Mink for Doris Day...

(1969) and Red Sky at Morning

Red Sky at Morning (1971 film)

Red Sky at Morning is a 1971 American drama film based on the 1968 Richard Bradford novel of the same name, and starring Richard Thomas, Catherine Burns, and Desi Arnaz, Jr....

(1971).

Television

Burns's television debut was the role of Mary Warren in Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

's The Crucible

The Crucible

The Crucible is a 1952 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatization of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the US government blacklisted accused communists...

(1967). Her other TV credits include the adaptation of Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

's play A Memory of Two Mondays

A Memory of Two Mondays

A Memory of Two Mondays is a one-act play by Arthur Miller.Based on Miller's own experiences, the play focuses on a group of desperate workers earning their livings in a Brooklyn automobile parts warehouse during the Great Depression in the 1930s, a time of 25 percent unemployment in the United...

(1974) and guest appearances on One Life to Live

One Life to Live

One Life to Live is an American soap opera which debuted on July 15, 1968 and has been broadcast on the ABC television network. Created by Agnes Nixon, the series was the first daytime drama to primarily feature racially and socioeconomically diverse characters and consistently emphasize social...

, Love, American Style

Love, American Style

Love, American Style is an hour-long TV anthology produced by Paramount Television and originally aired between September 1969 and January 1974...

, Adam-12

Adam-12

Adam-12 was a television police drama which followed two police officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, Pete Malloy and Jim Reed, as they patrolled the streets of Los Angeles in their patrol unit, 1-Adam-12. Created by Jack Webb who is known for creating Dragnet, the series captured a...

, The Mod Squad

The Mod Squad

The Mod Squad is a television series that ran on ABC from September 24, 1968, until August 23, 1973. This series starred Michael Cole, Peggy Lipton, Clarence Williams III, and Tige Andrews...

, Police Woman

Police Woman (TV series)

Police Woman is an American television police drama starring Angie Dickinson that ran on NBC for four seasons, from September 13, 1974, to March 29, 1978.-Synopsis:...

, The Waltons

The Waltons

The Waltons is an American television series created by Earl Hamner, Jr., based on his book Spencer's Mountain, and a 1963 film of the same name. The show centered on a family growing up in a rural Virginia community during the Great Depression and World War II. The series pilot was a television...

and The Bionic Woman

The Bionic Woman

The Bionic Woman is an American television series starring Lindsay Wagner that aired for three seasons between 1976 and 1978 as a spin off from The Six Million Dollar Man. Wagner stars as tennis pro Jaime Sommers who is nearly killed in a skydiving accident. Sommers' life is saved by Oscar Goldman ...

. She continued on television throughout the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, when she turned from acting to writing.

Books

Her children's book, The Winter Bird, was published by Windmill Books in 1971. Staying behind when other birds go south for the winter, a little bird discovers a new way of life in the unusual world of carousel horses.

Radio

She also was an actress on radio, appearing in 1973 on Mutual's The Zero Hour

The Zero Hour (Rod Serling series)

The Zero Hour was a 1973-74 radio drama anthology series hosted by Rod Serling. With tales of mystery, adventure and suspense, the program aired in stereo for two seasons...

, hosted by Rod Serling

Rod Serling

Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter, novelist, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form...

.

During the 1990s, while employed as an office receptionist, she was writing a play about the first production of Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...

's The Lower Depths

The Lower Depths

The Lower Depths is perhaps Maxim Gorky's best-known play. It was written during the winter of 1901 and the spring of 1902. Subtitled "Scenes from Russian Life," it depicted a group of impoverished Russians living in a shelter near the Volga. Produced by the Moscow Arts Theatre on December 18,...

at the Moscow Arts Theatre.

External links