This page uses content from the Shirley Knight biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.

Shirley Enola Knight was born July 5, 1936 to a wealthy family in Goessel, Kansas.

She 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.

She appeared in The Group (1964) and Petulia (1967). She also starred in Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969).

In the 1960s she abandoned Hollywood in favor of the Broadway stage, but she has since returned to film as Helen Hunt's mother in As Good As It Gets, and to television in a number of programs, including as Faith Ford's mother in Ford's failed sitcom Maggie Winters, and on series such as Murder, She Wrote, Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Desperate Housewives as Bree Van De Kamp's mother-in-law Phyllis Van De Kamp.

She has two daughters by two different marriages, the latter to the writer John Hopkins.

Filmography (partial)

Trivia

Mother of actress Kaitlin Hopkins

External links

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify the biographical information on this page under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.