Kelly Bishop, born Carole Bishop, is an American actress and dancer born in Colorado Springs on February 28, 1944. She is known as Sheila in the musical A Chorus Line on Broadway, as Marjorie Houseman in the movie Dirty Dancing, and as Emily Gilmore in Gilmore Girls on television.
Dance and Broadway
She grew up in Denver and devoted her teenage years to ballet training. At the age of eighteen, she moved to New York and began working as a dancer in the ballet company of Radio City Music Hall. Then he moved on to Broadway musicals. She was the first to play the role of Sheila in A Chorus Line, staged in 1975; Many details of the character's background were taken from Bishop's own life in the preparatory workshops.
This performance earned her a Tony Award for best supporting actress in a musical in 1976. Years later, he returned to Broadway in 2011 in a revival of Anything Goes.
Cinema and television
Her best-known film work was 1987's Dirty Dancing, in which she played Marjorie Houseman, Baby's mother. She also appeared in mother roles in films such as Private Parts (1997) and Wonder Boys (2000). On television, she played Emily Gilmore, Lorelai's mother, in Gilmore Girls, which ran for seven seasons between 2000 and 2007, and she reprized the same character in Netflix's Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life miniseries in 2016.
She worked again with Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino on the series Bunheads in 2012-2013, playing Fanny Flowers, who runs a ballet school; this role was closer to her dance background. The Marvelous Mrs. She guest starred as Benedetta in Maisel. He also made guest appearances in TV series such as Law & Order and The Good Wife.
