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Sharon Gless

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Sharon Gless
Sharon Gless, August 1991
BornSharon Marguerite Gless
(1943-05-31) May 31, 1943 (age 81)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
OccupationActress
Years active1971–present
SpouseBarney Rosenzweig (1991–present)
Websitehttp://www.sharongless.com

Sharon Marguerite Gless (born May 31, 1943) is an American character actress of stage, film and television, who is best known for her roles as Maggie Philbin on Switch (1975–1978), as Sgt. Christine Cagney in the police procedural drama series Cagney & Lacey (1982–1988) and as Debbie Novotny in the Showtime cable television series Queer as Folk (2000–2005). She is an Emmy Award winner currently playing Madeline Westen on Burn Notice. She plays Jane Juska in A Round-Heeled Woman, a stage adaptation by Jane Prowse of Jane Juska's book. The first production ran in San Francisco in early 2010. Sharon will star in a new production in Miami starting December 30, 2010, to be directed by Jane Prowse.

Early life and career

A fifth-generation Californian, Sharon Gless was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Marjorie McCarthy and sportswear manufacturing executive, Dennis J. Gless. Her maternal grandfather was Neil McCarthy, a prominent Los Angeles attorney for Howard Hughes who also had a large clientele of major film studio executives and actors. Wanting to become an actress, she sought her grandfather's advice and he told her: "It's a filthy business. You stay out of it" but a few years later when she spoke to him again about acting he encouraged her, and gave her money for acting class. She worked as a secretary for the advertising agencies Grey Advertising and Young & Rubicam, and then for the independent movie production companies Sassafras Films and General Film Corporation. After deciding to switch to acting, Gless took classes and in 1974 signed a 10-year contract with Universal Studios. She has described herself as the last of the studio contract players — a salaried, Old Hollywood apprentice system which Universal was the last to employ”.

Career

At the beginning of her career, Gless appeared in numerous television series and TV movies, such as Revenge of the Stepford Wives, Faraday and Company with Dan Daily and James Naughton (1973–1974) and Emergency! She played small parts in Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969–1976), until being offered the role of Kathleen Faverty, which she played from 1974 to 1976. This was in addition to a variety of guest-starring roles on television, including the part of the classy young secretary, Maggie Philbin, opposite Eddie Albert and Robert Wagner on the CBS private detective/con artist series Switch (1975–1978). Despite being a newcomer on the show, she got along very well with both Albert and Wagner, both on and off-screen. When the show was canceled after the third season, she thanked both Albert and Wagner for giving a jump start to her career.

While under contract with Universal, she co-starred with John Schuck in the 1979 Steven Bochco television sitcom, Turnabout (based on the Thorne Smith 1931 novel about a husband and wife who temporarily switch bodies), which failed to be a ratings blockbuster.

Beginning with the series' second episode, Gless replaced actress Meg Foster in the role of NYPD police detective Christine Cagney on Cagney & Lacey. In 1991, she married the series' executive producer, Barney Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig created the 1990–1992 CBS drama series The Trials of Rosie O'Neill for Gless and, uncredited, played the only partially seen psychiatrist to whom attorney O'Neill confided at the beginning of each episode. Gless, who had garnered five Emmy nominations – including two wins and a Golden Globe win for her role as Cagney – earned two additional Emmy nominations for this subsequent series.

In 1994 and 1995, Gless and her television partner, Tyne Daly, joined together to recreate their title roles in a quartet of critically acclaimed and popular Cagney & Lacey television movies which they called “The Menopause Years”.

In 1998, Gless narrated the documentary Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature. Between 2000 and 2005, Gless appeared as Hal Sparks's supportive and somewhat overbearing mother, Debbie Novotny, in the acclaimed Showtime cable television series Queer as Folk.

In 2000, she was on an episode of Touched by an Angel entitled "The Perfect Game".

On May 26, 2005, Gless was one of the mourners at Eddie Albert's funeral, along with ex-Switch co-stars Robert Wagner and Charlie Callas. In 2006, Gless starred in the BBC television series The State Within. The following year she co-starred in the USA Network cable television series Burn Notice, playing Michael Westen's (Jeffrey Donovan) mother, Madeline Westen. In addition, Gless was a guest star on several episodes of the FX Network cable television series Nip/Tuck as an unstable agent named Colleen Rose, a role that netted her an Emmy Award nomination.

In 2009, Gless starred in her first leading role as a lesbian character in the independent film Hannah Free (Ripe Fruit Films), described as a film about a lifelong love affair between an independent spirit and the woman she calls home. The film is based on a screenplay by the Jeff Award-winning playwright Claudia Allen and directed by Wendy Jo Carlton.

In 2010, she is starring in a stage adaptation of Jane Juska's A Round-Heeled Woman .

Theater

Gless's most recent stage appearance was in A Round-Heeled Woman, Jane Prowse's stage adaptation of Jane Juska's book A Round-Heeled Woman: my Late-life Adventures in Sex and Romance, the first production of which took place in January - February 2010, at Z Space at Artaud, San Francisco, USA. There will be a new production at GableStage in Miami, starting December 30, 2010.

Gless made her stage debut in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine at Stage West in Springfield, Massachusetts. Gless has extensive stage experience including two appearances in London's West End, first in 1993 with Bill Paterson, when she created the role of Annie Wilkes in the stage version of Stephen King's Misery at the Criterion Theatre, and then in 1996, where she appeared opposite Tom Conti in Neil Simon's Chapter 2, at the Gielgud Theatre. She starred at Chicago playhouse The Victory Gardens Theater in Claudia Allen's Cahoots, as well as several stints, including an evening at Madison Square Garden with the National Company of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues.

Author

Sharon Gless announced, shyly, on the 2007 Queer As Folk Reunion Luncheon that she is writing a book – presumably an autobiography – about, among other things, her time on QAF and alluded to it not being published until after she is “gone.”

Awards and honors

References

  1. Newsday, July 7, 2004
  2. Sharon Gless Biography (1943-)

External links

Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series
1954–1975
1976–2000
2001–present
Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama
1969–1979
1980–1999
2000–2019
2020–present

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