Judith Ivey
Encyclopedia
Judith Lee Ivey is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 actress and director.

Personal life

Ivey was born in El Paso, Texas
El Paso, Texas
El Paso, is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, and lies in far West Texas. In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 649,121. It is the sixth largest city in Texas and the 19th largest city in the United States...

, the daughter of Dorothy Lee (née
Married and maiden names
A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....

 Lewis), a teacher, and Nathan Aldean Ivey, a college instructor and dean. She spent 1965-1968 in Dowagiac, Michigan
Dowagiac, Michigan
Dowagiac is a city in Cass County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 6,147 at the 2000 census. It is part of the South Bend–Mishawaka, IN-MI, Metropolitan Statistical Area....

, where she attended Union High School through tenth grade. Judith graduated from Marion High School in Marion, Illinois in 1970. Ivey is an alumna of John A. Logan College
John A. Logan College
John A. Logan College is a community college in Carterville, Illinois, part of the Illinois Community College System. As of 2008, it had total enrollment of 7,364 students, including 2,204 full-time students and 5,160 part-time students.-History:John A...

, SIU-Carbondale, CArbondale, Illinois, and Illinois State University
Illinois State University
Illinois State University , founded in 1857, is the oldest public university in Illinois; it is located in the town of Normal. ISU is considered a "national university" that grants a variety of doctoral degrees and strongly emphasizes research; it is also recognized as one of the top ten largest...

. She is married to Tim Braine (her second marriage) and the couple have two children, Maggie and Tom.

Career

Despite a long history of theater and film performances, Ivey is often associated with her one-year run on Designing Women
Designing Women
Designing Women is an American television sitcom that centered on the working and personal lives of four Southern women and one man in an interior design firm in Atlanta, Georgia. It aired on the CBS television network from September 29, 1986 until May 24, 1993. The show was created by head writer...

in its final season, playing the Texan B.J. Poteet. Ivey replaced Julia Duffy
Julia Duffy
Julia Duffy is an American actress from Minneapolis, Minnesota, specializing in character roles, best known as the spoiled rich girl and Dick Loudon's inn maid, Stephanie Vanderkellen, on the 1980s sitcom, Newhart.-Career:Duffy's early caeer included parts in soap operas such as One Life to Live,...

's Alison Sugarbaker, who was herself a replacement for Delta Burke
Delta Burke
Delta Ramona Leah Burke is an American television and film actress. Her television work includes a leading role as Suzanne Sugarbaker in the CBS sitcom Designing Women...

's character, Suzanne Sugarbaker. She also played a notable role on the television show Will & Grace
Will & Grace
Will & Grace was an American television sitcom that was originally broadcast on NBC from September 21, 1998 to May 18, 2006 for a total of eight seasons. Will & Grace remains the most successful television series with gay principal characters...

where she portrayed the mother of Dr. Leo Markus.

Ivey won two Tony Awards as Best Featured Actress in a Play for Steaming
Steaming (play)
Steaming is a 1981 play written by English playwright Nell Dunn first staged at Theatre Royal, Stratford, in London. It won the 1981 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy ....

in 1983 and Hurlyburly
Hurlyburly
Hurlyburly is a dark comedy play by David Rabe, first staged in 1984.-Plot:More than three hours long, Hurlyburly focuses on the intersecting lives of several low- to mid-level Hollywood players in the 1980s. Fueled by massive amounts of drugs, they attempt to find some meaning in their isolated,...

in 1985. She was also nominated for Park Your Car in Harvard Yard in 1992. Other theatre credits include Piaf
Piaf
Piaf is a French word:* Édith Piaf* Musée Édith Piaf* Sans Fusils, Ni Souliers, à Paris: Martha Wainwright's Piaf Record* Piaf * 3772 Piaf , a main-belt asteroid discovered on 1982 by L. G. Karachkina...

, Bedroom Farce
Bedroom Farce (play)
Bedroom Farce is a 1975 comedic play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It had a London production at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1978.-Overview:...

, Precious Sons, Blithe Spirit
Blithe Spirit (play)
Blithe Spirit is a comic play written by Noël Coward which takes its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" . The play concerns socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to...

, Voices in the Dark, and Follies
Follies
Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...

Recently, she portrayed Amanda in The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...

at the Long Wharf Theatre
Long Wharf Theatre
Long Wharf Theatre is a nonprofit institution in New Haven, Connecticut, a pioneer in the not-for-profit regional theatre movement, the originator of several prominent plays, and a venue where many internationally known actors have appeared....

 and reprised the role in March 2010 at the Roundabout Theatre in New York, as well as the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Ivey portrayed Ann Landers in the solo play The Lady With All the Answers at 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...

 Cherry Lane Theatre in October 2009.

Ivey has been in many films, including Brighton Beach Memoirs
Brighton Beach Memoirs
Brighton Beach Memoirs is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon, the first chapter in what is known as his Eugene trilogy. It precedes Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound.-Characters:*Eugene Morris Jerome, almost 15...

, Miles from Home
Miles from Home
Miles From Home is a 1988 film starring Richard Gere. It is about two brothers who, after being forced off their farm in the debt stricken mid-west, become folk heroes when they begin robbing the banks that have been foreclosing on farmers. The movie was directed by Gary Sinise and written by Chris...

, Compromising Positions
Compromising Positions
Compromising Positions is a 1985 film released by Paramount and directed by Frank Perry. The screenplay, by Susan Isaacs, was adapted from her 1978 detective novel. The plot concerns a Long Island housewife and former journalist who becomes involved in a murder investigation...

, Harry & Son
Harry & Son
Harry & Son is a 1984 American drama film directed by Paul Newman, who also stars. The screenplay by Newman and Ronald Buck focuses on the relationship between a blue-collar worker and his son, who fails at various odd jobs while aspiring to be a writer. Much of the film was shot in Lake Worth, FL...

, The Woman in Red, Sister, Sister
Sister, Sister (1987 film)
Sister, Sister is a 1987 Southern Gothic thriller directed and co-written by Bill Condon. The film stars Eric Stoltz, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Judith Ivey.-Plot summary:Matt Rutledge goes on vacation to the Louisiana bayou country...

, In Country
In Country
In Country is a 1989 American drama film produced and directed by Norman Jewison, starring Bruce Willis and Emily Lloyd. The screenplay by Frank Pierson and Cynthia Cidre was based on the novel by Bobbie Ann Mason. The original music score was composed by James Horner...

, Hello Again
Hello Again (film)
Hello Again is a 1987 romantic fantasy-comedy film, directed and produced by Frank Perry, written by Susan Isaacs and starring Shelley Long, Judith Ivey, Gabriel Byrne, Corbin Bernsen, Sela Ward, Austin Pendleton, Carrie Nye, Robert Lewis, Madeleine Potter, Thor Fields and Illeana...

, The Lonely Guy
The Lonely Guy
The Lonely Guy is a 1984 romantic comedy film, directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Steve Martin. The screenplay was written by Neil Simon, based on the book The Lonely Guy's Book of Life by Bruce Jay Friedman....

, There Goes the Neighborhood
There Goes the Neighborhood (film)
There Goes the Neighborhood, released as Paydirt in most foreign countries, is a 1992 comedy film. The film tells a story of a dying prisoner who whispers the location of his loot to the facility's psychologist Willis Embry who heads to the New Jersey suburbs to find it.-Synopsis:Prison...

, The Devil's Advocate, What Alice Found
What Alice Found
What Alice Found is a Sundance award-winning feature film released in U.S. theaters in 2003/2004 and for U.S. home video in 2004. It has aired on the Sundance Channel, Lifetime Movie Network, IFC, Canal Plus in France and ABC affiliates across the U.S....

, and Flags of Our Fathers
Flags of Our Fathers
Flags of Our Fathers is a New York Times bestselling book by James Bradley with Ron Powers about the five United States Marines and one United States Navy Corpsman who would eventually be made famous by Joe Rosenthal's lauded photograph of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, one of the costliest and...



Other television roles include starring roles as Kate McCrorey in the 1990-91 series Down Home, set in a Texas coastal town, and as Alexandria Buchanan in the short-lived series The 5 Mrs. Buchanans. Ivey was also in the 1985 TV remake of The Long Hot Summer, in the role of Noel Varner (Joanne Woodward
Joanne Woodward
Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward is an American actress, television and theatrical producer, and widow of Paul Newman...

's role in the 1958 film version). The miniseries also starred Jason Robards
Jason Robards
Jason Nelson Robards, Jr. was an American actor on stage, and in film and television, and a winner of the Tony Award , two Academy Awards and the Emmy Award...

 and Don Johnson
Don Johnson
Donnie Wayne "Don" Johnson is an American actor known for his work in television and film. He played the lead role of James "Sonny" Crockett in the 1980s TV cop series, Miami Vice, which led him to huge success. He also played the lead role in the 1990s cop series, Nash Bridges...

, and was nominated for three Emmys. She also provided the voice of Eleanor Sherman in the animated series The Critic
The Critic
The Critic is an American prime time animated series revolving around the life of film critic Jay Sherman, voiced by actor Jon Lovitz. It was created by Al Jean and Mike Reiss, both of whom had worked as writers on The Simpsons. The Critic had 23 episodes produced, first broadcast on ABC in 1994,...

.

Stage directing credits

  • Vanities: A New Musical
    Vanities
    Vanities is a comedy-drama stage production written by Jack Heifner. The story centers on the lives and friendship of three Texas cheerleaders starting from high school.-Production history:Vanities had one of the longest Off-Broadway runs on record...

     -- Pasadena Playhouse
  • Fugue -- Cherry Lane Theatre
    Cherry Lane Theatre
    The Cherry Lane Theatre , located at 38 Commerce Street in the borough of Manhattan, was New York City's oldest, continuously running off-Broadway theater...

    , 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...

  • Southern Comforts -- Primary Stages, 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...

  • Secrets of a Soccer Mom -- Snapple Theatre (Off-Broadway)
  • Bad Dates -- Northlight Repertory Theatre, Chicago
  • Bad Dates -- Laguna Playhouse
  • Steel Magnolias
    Steel Magnolias
    Steel Magnolias is a 1989 American comedy-drama film directed by Herbert Ross that stars Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Dolly Parton, Daryl Hannah and Julia Roberts....

    -- Alley Theatre
    Alley Theatre
    The Alley Theatre is a Tony Award-winning indoor theatre in Downtown Houston, Texas, and hosts two stages. The "Hubbard" is the main stage with seating for 824; the more intimate "Neuhaus" seats 310. Nine towers and open-air terraces give the Alley Theatre a castle-like quality. Inside, a staircase...

  • More -- Union Square Theatre, 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...

  • More -- Falcon Theatre, Los Angeles
  • Waiting for the Flood -- ACT
    American Conservatory Theater
    American Conservatory Theater is a large non-profit theater company in San Francisco, California, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. A.C.T. was founded in 1965 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Playhouse and Carnegie Tech by theatre and...

    , San Francisco
  • Two for the Seesaw -- Westport Playhouse
  • The Go-For-It Guy -- Aspen Comedy Festival
  • Soccer Moms -- Fleetwood Stage

External links

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