Veteran actress Shirley Knight is dead to me

So young.

Oh no! Loved her.

I liked her as Hope's obsessively controlling but well-meaning mom on "thirtysomething."

I was just about to say the same thing R3.

She was lovely until she got heavy in the '80s.

I saw her as Amanda Wingfield in "The Glass Menagerie" at the McCarter Theater in the early 90s, and she was excellent. I stayed for the talkback, and she was really interesting because she had worked intensely with Tennessee Williams for most of her career and had a lot to say about him. She did not come across as pretentious or pompous but as very real.

I like to think she’s looking down at Martin Hewitt’s naked ass from a stairway in heaven.

Aw, man. RIP. I mostly know her more recent work, and think she was damn good.

Although I get her mixed up with Lois Smith.

I'm still here, you bitch!

Just watched her last night in “The Group” in TCM. RIP

^ on

She originated the part with my all-time favorite Tennessee Williams character name: Heavenly Finley.

She was always good, even when she could sleepwalk through it (those Mall Cop movies, her episode of Murder, She Wrote).

Dutchman was a great showcase for her and Al Freeman.

Actors like her, Shelley Winters, Lois Smith--we're never getting them back, with the obsession on looking young and being a leading lady career-long (or marrying an agent and retiring). Parker Posey might be our only hope among the next wave in middle age.

With her Tony Award for fellow Texan Robert Patrick's play "Kennedy's Children". Great photo, she looks a little like Jane Pauley here.

Loved her in "The Rain People" with James Caan when he was young and sexy.

She was perfect in Playing For Time.

Aw, RIP.

She was an interesting performer, had the stage and independent film background of an artsier thespian actress, but because of her sugary-sweet vanilla-y looks and voice, she was often cast in typical 'sweetheart' supporting roles. Even in 'Petulia' she looks just as good as Julie Christie, which was not an easy task. Luckily she was able to get better work on stage and on TV (I still remember her from Playing for Time), in addition to keeping her profile high with bigger movies like As Good As It Gets.

It's a shame her film 'The Dutchman' seems to be lost or forgotten, she won the Best Actress Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival for it in 1968 and it's apparently quite an interesting adaptation, very abstract and esoteric with very racially provocative and controversial themes. I would love to see it.

In 2013 she got her first lead role on film in almost 50 years in Redwood Highway, opposite silver fox Tom Skerrit. She did a SAG Q&A for it that I attended and she was so giddy with excitement that she was able to play the lead in a film at her age, she kept asking us individually afterward if we liked the movie.

r15, I saw that film in its entirety for the first time a month or so ago and was riveted by the performances of both Shirley Knight and James Caan.

She didn't make much of an impression on me when I saw "Sweet Bird of Youth." It's not much of a movie anyway. Has anyone checked on Carroll Baker?

She was gorgeous in The Outer Limits classic The Man Who Was Never Born.

[quote] Actors like her, Shelley Winters, Lois Smith--we're never getting them back, with the obsession on looking young and being a leading lady career-long (or marrying an agent and retiring).

I'm not sure that's entirely true. We have some terrific character actors now to play those kinds of types: Patricia Clarkson, Margo Martindale, Ann Dowd, Allison Janney, Laurie Metcalf

She played a Betty Broderick-type character on Law & Order, and was miles better than Meredith Baxter in essentially the same role.

Really good actress. RIP.

She had a career over 60 years, staring as an angelic-looking ingenue and eventually morphing into Shelley Winters.

She acts with Viki Sleezak playing an undercover policewoman on One Life To Live

She wasn't Shirley Winters fat.

[quote] With her Tony Award for fellow Texan Robert Patrick's play "Kennedy's Children".

She BEAT Meryl Streep for that Tony Award, in Streep's only Tony Award nomination

Bree’s Monster-in-Law!

Could be related.

I was just going to mention The Outer Limits, R20. It was probably the first time I noticed her.

She's also worth watching in the [bold]Circle of Fear[/bold] episode, 'Legion of Demons' (1972)/

She was wonderful in an under-rated film...Stuart Saves His Family. Yes, I'm serious.

She was the most memorable and strangest and creepiest part of ENDLESS LOVE.

[quote] She was wonderful in an under-rated film...Stuart Saves His Family.

That’s former Senator Stuart, buddy.

I thought they were crazy to only keep her for five episodes of Desperate Housewives. She was a terrific foil for Bree.

[quote]That’s former Senator Stuart, buddy.

So, R33? There's nothing in that film of which Al Franken needs to be ashamed.

Maybe Knight didn't want to do more.

She was still beautiful in Endless Love (1981), even though she was beginning to get heavy.

She reminded me of Lois Smith too R8. I didn't realize she was in her eighties. She always had an energy and youthfulness that made her seem younger to me. In any event, loved her!

That was a particularly good L&O, r22: the Wages of Love. Jerry Orbach played her defense attorney. She also did a nutty SVU episode as a rich woman whose overprotected daughter is about marry a poor but honest young man with a pregnant ex-girlfriend. The ex-girlfriend is kidnapped. Whodunnit?

[quote] Jerry Orbach played her defense attorney.

He played an attorney? I thought he played a police detective.

R40 he did a guest spot prior to being cast in season 3

Whatever he played, just be thankful he didn't sing.

Thanks, R41.

Tehe, R42.

She was beautiful.

I also got her mixed up with Tuesday Weld, the woman that played Robert Duvall's annoying wife in Falling Down.

Shirley Knight was great on that one episode of Law & order SVU where she made a young girl remember her repressed memories of being raped by her father but it never even happened. I think Amy Irving was in that episode too.

No one knows who she is, stop this nonsense with infamous folk.

Definition of infamous

1: having a reputation of the worst kind : notoriously evil an infamous traitor

2: causing or bringing infamy : DISGRACEFUL an infamous crime

3: convicted of an offense bringing infamy

Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in fo' me!

She was also great as Paul Rudd's mother in Our Idiot Brother.

There is a scene in "Dark at the Top of the Stairs" - it's just a moment. Her line (to her mother Dorothy McGuire) is simply "He died?" and there is such pain and tenderness in her question that it absolutely breaks your heart. It is so real. Through all the different stages of her career she was always interesting to watch and a wonderful actress.

Landscape of the Body and Kennedy's Children/ both mid 70s onstage

I loved her! Who are we talking about, again?

I just mentioned The Dark at the Top of the Stairs yesterday on a thread about Robert Preston, and had been thinking about how good she was in that film, a really modern performance at a time when actors were often still mired in the old studio system kind of acting. I don't think she ever gave a bad performance.

She was great in As Good As It Gets, an Actor’s Actor. She balanced out Helen Hunt’s character and Hunt would not of got an Oscar without that strong supporting performance.

I absolutely love her in THE GROUP. She is the heart and soul of that film. I recently saw THE RAIN PEOPLE and was blown away by her performance. Terrific actress and by all accounts, a great lady. RIP.

Good God! the woman never stopped working!

I seem to remember that in Petulia her performance was all about her hair.

what may be most impressive is she had the good sense to get her ass out Wichita! ........While a junior at Wichita State University, she decided that some acting skills might help advance that goal. So, answering an advertisement in Theater Arts Magazine, she bought herself a six-week course at the Pasadena Playhouse in California....NYTimes

That picture was not Shirley Knight, IMO.

It was her - a very young her and a her we haven't seen since the 1960s

I realize this is abhorrent, but I took note of her with As Good As It Gets (which came out in 1997). It is one of those love/hate romantic-comedy movies that came out pre 9-11. It was a very different world then and I'm guessing one that will never come back again. The U.S. and Americans in general had much hope then, with Clinton's "New Economy" and everyone could play the stock market. It's gotten a lot more dark ever since 9-11, so maybe the movie should be re-classified as fantasy.

Notwithstanding, I loved Shirley Knight and I'll make it a point to see her classic performances.