Biography: Kate Jackson

Kate Jackson (born October 29, 1948) is an American actress, director, and producer. She is a three-time Emmy Award nominee, twice in the Best Actress category and once in the Best Supporting Actress category. She has also been nominated for several Golden Globe Awards, and has won the title of Favorite Television Actress in England, and Favorite Television Star in Germany several times for her work in the television series, Scarecrow and Mrs. King.

She also co-produced that series through her production company, Shoot the Moon Enterprises Ltd. with Warner Brothers Television. She is perhaps best-known for her role as Sabrina Duncan in the hugely popular 1970s television series Charlie's Angels. Jackson has starred in a number of theatrical and TV films, and played the lead role on the short-lived television adaptation of the film Baby Boom.

Jackson is a breast cancer survivor following two bouts with the disease in the late 1980s, and she serves as a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association.

Early life and career

Jackson was born in Birmingham, Alabama as Lucy Kate Jackson, the daughter of Ruth (née Shepherd) and Hogan Jackson, a business executive.^[[1]] She attended The Brooke Hill School for Girls and then went on to the University of Mississippi, where she was a member of the Delta Rho chapter of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority,^[[2]] but during her sophomore year at the University of Mississippi, she moved to New York City to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Jackson worked as an NBC page at the network's Rockefeller Center studios and did summer stock in Vermont before landing a small role as the mysterious, silent ghost Daphne Harridge on the 1960s supernatural daytime quasi-soap opera Dark Shadows. In 1971, Jackson had a starring role as Tracy Collins in Night of Dark Shadows, the second feature film based on the daytime serial. She was joined by her Dark Shadows castmates Lara Parker, David Selby, Grayson Hall, Nancy Barrett, John Karlen, and Thayer David. This movie was more loosely based on the series than House of Dark Shadows was, and it did not fare as well at the box office as the first film did.^[[3]] The same year she worked with legendary actor James Stewart in two episodes of the short-lived sitcom, The Jimmy Stewart Show.^[4]

She then appeared as nurse Jill Danko, wife of a character played by Sam Melville, for four seasons on the 1970s crime drama The Rookies. A supporting cast member, Jackson filled her free time by studying directing and editing.^[5] She also appeared in several TV films during this period. Jackson's performance was well received in the 1972 independent film Limbo, one of the first theatrical films to address the Vietnam War and the wives of soldiers who were POWs, MIA or killed in action (KIA).^[6] She also appeared in an all-star ensemble cast in Death Scream, a 1975 television dramatization of the circumstances surrounding a real-life 1964 murder as reported in a sensational article in the New York Times.

Charlie's Angels

In 1975, she met with Rookies producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg to discuss her contractual obligation to star in another television series for Spelling/Goldberg Productions upon that show's cancellation. Goldberg told her of a series that was available — because "every network has passed on it", The Alley Cats. Spelling said that when he told Jackson the title of the series had to be changed and asked her what she would like to call it, she replied, Charlie's Angels, pointing to a picture of three female angels on the wall behind Spelling.^[7]

At the beginning of the third season of Charlie's Angels, Jackson was offered the Meryl Streep role in the feature film Kramer vs Kramer (1979), but was forced to turn it down because Spelling told her that they were unable to rearrange the hit show's shooting schedule to give her time off to do the film.^[8] At the end of the third season, Jackson left the show saying, "I served it well and it served me well, now it's time to go."^{[citation needed]}

Charlie's Angels has been on the air in reruns somewhere continuously around the world since its debut in 1976. In 2004, the television film Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Charlie's Angels aired, with actress Lauren Stamile portraying Jackson.^[9] In August 2006, Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Jaclyn Smith, the three original Angels, appeared together in a surprise appearance at the Emmy Awards in a tribute to Spelling, who had recently died. Holding hands, they were greeted with applause and smiling faces in the audience at the Shrine Auditorium.

In 1982, Jackson starred opposite her Rookies co-star, Michael Ontkean, and Harry Hamlin in the feature film Making Love, directed by Arthur Hiller. It was a movie some considered to be ahead of its time, and attempted to deal sensitively with the issue of homosexuality. Howevever, it received tepid reviews and did poorly at the box office.^{[citation needed]}

Scarecrow and Mrs. King

As soon as she was free of Charlie's Angels, Jackson had made what was for the time a whopping $6,000,000 deal with CBS to star in a comedy series. She elected instead to accept the starring role in Scarecrow and Mrs. King, a one-hour action comedy in which she played housewife Amanda King opposite Bruce Boxleitner's spy, code-named "Scarecrow". Jackson also co-produced the series with Warner Brothers Television through her production company, Shoot the Moon Enterprises. It was during this series that she developed a keen interest in directing. When asked on the set one afternoon "What do you do tomorrow?", Jackson replied, "I don't work, I just direct." Scarecrow and Mrs. King was on the air from 1983-1987, The series was strong enough in the ratings that it beat its NBC competition, Boone.^{[citation needed]}

During filming of the show's fourth season, in January 1987, Jackson elected to receive a mammogram for the first time, a test which led to the diagnosis of a small malignant tumor. This time, her series' producer — the only person she told about the diagnosis—worked with her to reschedule her work on the show. Checking into a hospital under an alias, her course of action was to undergo a lumpectomy. Jackson returned to the series a week later, working with the aid of painkillers through five weeks of radiation treatments.^[10]

Later career

Receiving a "clean bill of health", Jackson followed up the cancelled Scarecrow and Mrs. King by taking on the main role in Baby Boom, a 1988 TV sitcom version of the original movie starring Diane Keaton, but it lasted only one season.

In 1989, she starred in the film Loverboy playing Patrick Dempsey's mother. She had taken the job in order to work with the director, Joan Micklin Silver, having admired the work Silver had done on the film Hester Street.^{[citation needed]}

In September 1989, another mammogram indicated residual breast cancer which the previous operation had missed. This time the course of action was a partial mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. “The range of emotions you go through is amazing”, she says. “But I made a conscious decision to be positive.” Jaclyn Smith cancelled a trip to New York City, meeting Jackson at her doctor’s office before she checked into the hospital. “I’d been crying before I got there,” says Smith. “Then I saw Kate, and she had a smile on her face. She said, 'We've gotten through other things, like divorces, and we'll get though this.' And we did.” When Jackson awoke after surgery, “The first thing I heard was good news. My lymph nodes were clean.” Back at home she read medical journals, switched to a macrobiotic diet and came to terms with her reconstructive surgery. “I'm never going to have the perfect body”, she says. “I'm not into facelifts and lip poufs. But I can wear a strapless evening gown, a bustier or whatever is required for a part.”^[10]

Jackson starred in several TV movies over the next several years, while working for breast cancer awareness. In 1995, on the heels of a night filming schedule on location, she checked herself into an Alabama hospital for tests due to a feeling of malaise and an inability to sleep. After several tests, Dr. Gerald Pohost, now head of cardiology at U.S.C., diagnosed that Jackson had been born with an atrial septal defect, a tiny hole in her heart which had previously gone undetected despite Jackson's active lifestyle. She underwent open heart surgery to correct the defect, although as cardiologist Dr. P. K. Shah related in a February [3], 2006, appearance with Jackson on Larry King Live, the current treatment no longer involves surgery.^[11] Jackson has dedicated herself to speaking out on the subjects of breast cancer and heart health and in 2003 was awarded the "Power of Love" award by the American Heart Association for her work.^[12]

Since then, Jackson has appeared in TV movies and has made numerous guest appearances on TV. However, she dialed down her professional pursuits when her son, Charles Taylor Jackson, was adopted in 1995. She stated at the time, "I don't see how I can go about a directing career and be a good mom at the same time. And if I'm not a good mom, I don't think it matters much what else I do well."

Jackson has a recurring role on Criminal Minds. In August 2008, she was a guest judge on an episode of fellow Angel Jaclyn Smith's Bravo reality series Shear Genius, presiding over a hairdressing competition to update the original trio's signature hairdos.^{[citation needed]}

Filmography

TV series

• Dark Shadows (1970-1971) Daphne Harridge
• The Rookies (1972-1976) Jill Danko
• Charlie's Angels (1976-1979) Sabrina Duncan
• Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983-1987) Mrs. Amanda King
• Baby Boom (1988-1989) J.C Wiatt

Theatrical films

• Night of Dark Shadows (1971) Tracy Collins
• Limbo (1972) Sandy Lawton
• Thunder and Lightning (1977) Nancy Sue Hunnicut
• Dirty Tricks (1981) Polly Bishop
• Making Love (1982) Claire Elliott
• Loverboy (1989) Diane Bodek
• Error in Judgment (1998) Shelley
• Larceny (2004) Mom
• No Regrets (2004) Suzanne Kennerly

TV movies

• The Rookies (1972) Jill Danko
• The New Healers (1972) Nurse Michelle Johnson
• Movin' On (1972) Cory
• Satan's School for Girls (1973) Roberta Lockhart
• Killer Bees (1974) Victoria Wells
• Death Cruise (1974) Mary Frances Radney
• Death Scream (1975) Carol
• Death at Love House (1976) Donna Gregory
• James at 15 (1977) Robin
• Topper (1979) Marion Kirby
• Inmates: A Love Story (1981) Jane Mount
• Thin Ice (1981) Linda Rivers
• Listen to Your Heart (1983) Frannie Greene
• The Stranger Within (1990) Mare Blackburn
• Quiet Killer (1992) Dr. Nora Hart
• Homewrecker (1992) (voice) Lucy
• Arly Hanks (1993) Arly Hanks
• Adrift (1993) Katie Nast
• Empty Cradle (1993) Rita Donahue
• Armed and Innocent (1994) Patsy Holland
• Justice in a Small Town (1994) Sandra Clayton
• A Kidnapping in the Family (1996) DeDe Cooper
• What Happened to Bobby Earl? (1997) Rose Earl
• Satan's School for Girls (2000) The Dean
• The Perfect Suspect (2006) Maureen Hansen

Personal life

Jackson lived with actor Edward Albert, Jr. in the early 1970s. In 1978, Jackson married fellow Southerner, the actor/producer Andrew Stevens, who is seven years her junior and the son of actress Stella Stevens; they divorced in 1980. She married David Greenwald in 1982, but they divorced two years later. Her third marriage was to stuntman Tom Hart in 1991, but they also divorced two years later.

Awards and nominations

Emmy Awards

• 1977: Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (nomination) for Charlie's Angels
• 1977: Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Movie or Special (nomination) for James at 15
• 1978: Outstanding Lead Actress for a Single Appearance in a Drama or Comedy Series (nomination) for Charlie's Angels.

Golden Globe

• 1977: Best TV Actress - Drama (nomination) - Charlie's Angels
• 1978: Best TV Actress - Drama (nomination) - Charlie's Angels
• 1979: Best TV Actress - Drama (nomination) - Charlie's Angels
• 1985: Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series - Drama (nomination) - Scarecrow and Mrs. King

Bravo Golden Otto Germany (won [3] times)

• 1986: TV Star (winner) - Scarecrow and Mrs. King
• 1987: TV Star (winner) - Scarecrow and Mrs. King
• 1988: TV Star (winner) - Scarecrow and Mrs. King

Bravo Bronze Otto Germany, [[3]]

• 1990: TV Star (winner) - Scarecrow and Mrs. King

References

1. ^ Film Reference bio
2. ^ "Notable Kappas/Entertainment". List. kappakappagamma.org. http://www.kappakappagamma.org/Content/NavigationMenu/All_About_Kappa/Notable_Kappas/Entertainment.htm. Retrieved 2009-05-18. 
3. ^ Scott, Kathryn Leigh and Pierson, Jim, editors. The Dark Shadows Movie Book. Pomegranate Press, Ltd., Los Angeles and London, 1998, pp. 23, 26
4. ^ [[1]]
5. ^ Armstrong, Lois (December 6, 1976). "Heavens Above! Charlie's Sexy Angels Are Old-Fashioned Girls Who Really Get Along". Cover story (People Magazine). http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20067182,00.html. Retrieved May 18, 2009. 
6. ^ "Limbo". Review. TV Guide. http://movies.tvguide.com/limbo/review/104322. Retrieved May 18, 2009. 
7. ^ "Charlie's 'Alley Cats'?" Newsweek, June 28, 1999.
8. ^ Spelling, Aaron; Graham, Jefferson (1996). A Prime-Time Life: An Autobiography. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 112. ISBN 0-312-14268-4. 
9. ^ Variety report on Charlie's Angels
10. ^ ^{a b} [[2]]
11. ^ Appearance on Larry King Live
12. ^ American Heart Association

External links

• Website about Jackson
• Kate Jackson at the Internet Movie Database
• Kate Jackson at TV.com
• Kate Jackson at Allmovie
• Kate Jackson at Yahoo! Movies

Kate Jackson main page.