Stockard Channing

Stockard Channing

Channing originated the role of Ouisa Kittredge in the stage and film versions of Six Degrees of Separation. She won the 1985 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the Broadway revival of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. Her film appearances include The Fortune, The Big Bus, The Cheap Detective, Heartburn, Up Close & Personal, Practical Magic, and Anything Else.

About Stockard Channing in brief

Summary Stockard ChanningStockard Channing is an American actress. She is known for playing Betty Rizzo in the film Grease and First Lady Abbey Bartlet on the NBC television series The West Wing. Channing originated the role of Ouisa Kittredge in the stage and film versions of Six Degrees of Separation. She won the 1985 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the Broadway revival of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. Her film appearances include The Fortune, The Big Bus, The Cheap Detective, Heartburn, Up Close & Personal, Practical Magic, and Woody Allen’s Anything Else. She also played the recurring role of Veronica Loy on the CBS drama The Good Wife. Channing was born in Manhattan, the daughter of Mary Alice, who came from a large Brooklyn Irish Catholic family, and Lester Napier Stockard, who was in the shipping business. Her sister is Lesly Stockard Smith, former mayor of Palm Beach, Florida. She graduated summa cum laude in 1965 from Radcliffe College in Massachusetts and received her acting training at HB Studio in New York City. She started her acting career with the experimental Theatre Company of Boston; she performed in the group’s Off-Broadway 1969 production of the Elaine May play AdaptationNext.

In 1971, she made her Broadway debut in Two Gentlemen of Verona — The Musical, working with playwright John Guare. In the 1970s, Channing played a mischievous car thief in the TV movie Silent Victory: The Kitty O’Neil Story. She starred in two short-lived sitcoms on CBS: The Cheap detective and O’Neil: The Silent Victory. She has a daughter with actor Ned Beatty, and a son with actor John Cusack, and is married to actor Matthew Brophy, who also starred in The WestWing. She currently lives in Los Angeles, California with her husband, actor John Travolta, and their daughter, Emma, who is a junior high student at the University of California, Los Angeles. She and her husband have a son, Jack, who plays the lead role in the television series Jack and the Henchman, which airs on PBS stations. The couple also have a daughter, Mia, who lives in New Jersey with her mother and brother, John, who works as an executive at a private equity firm. They have two sons, Jack and Jack Jr., who also stars in the series. They are married and have a young daughter, Ava.