Estelle Parsons (born November 20, 1927) is an American actress.[1]
After studying law, Parsons became a singer before deciding to pursue a career in acting. She worked for the television program Today and made her stage debut in 1961. During the 1960s, Parsons established her career on Broadway before progressing to film. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Blanche Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and was also nominated for her work in Rachel, Rachel (1968).
Parsons worked extensively in film and theatre during the 1970s and later directed several Broadway productions. Later work included perhaps her best known role, as Beverly Harris, mother of the title character, on the sitcomRoseanne, and, later, on its spinoff The Conners. She has been nominated five times for the Tony Award (four times for Lead Actress of a Play and once for Featured Actress). In 2004, Parsons was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Early life
Parsons was born in Lynn Hospital, Lynn, Massachusetts, the younger of two children born to Elinor Ingeborg (née Mattsson), a native of Sweden, and Eben Parsons, who was of English descent. Estelle's older sister, Elaine Parsons Ruggles, was born in 1923 and died in 1996.[2][3]
She attended Oak Grove School for Girls in Maine. After graduating from Connecticut College in 1949, Parsons initially studied law at Boston University School of Law, and then worked as a singer with a band before settling on an acting career in the early 1950s.[4] In 1983, when co-starring with fellow Academy Award-winning actor Jack Lemmon in a new Ernest Thompson stage play in Los Angeles, Parsons appeared on the November 1 episode of The Tonight Show, telling Johnny Carson that Lemmon had been her first boyfriend, when they were both teenagers in the 1940s.[5]
Career
Parsons moved to New York City, and worked as a writer, producer and commentator for The Today Show. She made her Broadway debut in 1956 in the ensemble of the Ethel Merman musical Happy Hunting. Her Off-Broadway debut was in 1961, and she received a Theatre World Award in 1963 for her performance in Whisper into My Good Ear/Mrs. Dally Has a Lover (1962).
In 1979, Parsons directed a production of Antony and Cleopatra at Interart Theatre in New York in which she incorporated some Spanish into the show, prompting Joseph Papp to invite her to direct at the New York Shakespeare Festival (now The Public Theatre), and becoming the first woman to do so.[7] As a director, Parsons has a number of Broadway credits, including a production of Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and As You Like It in 1986. Off-Broadway, she directed Dario Fo's Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo (1983). She served as the Artistic Director of the Actors Studio for five years, from 1998 to 2003.[8]
In April 2018, Parsons returned to television reprising her role as Beverly Harris, mother of Roseanne Barr's title character, in season 10, episode 5 of Roseanne.[14]
^"We Bombed in New Haven". Original Yale Repertory Program. December 4–23, 1967. Archived from the original on February 26, 2017. Retrieved February 25, 2017.
