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Jane Alexander
Birth name	Jane Quigley
Born	October 28, 1939 (1939-10-28) (age 68) Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Years active	1970-present
Spouse(s)	Robert Alexander (1962-1974) Edwin Sherin (1975-present)
Awards Emmy Awards Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie 1981 Playing for Time 2005 Warm Springs Tony Awards Best Featured Actress in a Play 1969 The Great White Hope

Jane Alexander (born October 28, 1939) is an award-winning American actress, author, and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Although perhaps best known for playing the female lead in The Great White Hope on both stage and screen, Alexander has played a wide array of roles in both theater and film, and has committed herself to a variety of charitable causes.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Career 1.3 Personal life 2 Additional Broadway credits 3 Awards 3.1 Academy awards (film) 3.2 Theatrical awards 3.3 Emmy Awards (television) 4 Bibliography 5 Citations 6 External links

Alexander was born Jane Quigley in Boston, Massachusetts, daughter of Ruth Elizabeth (née Pearson), a nurse, and Thomas B. Quigley, an orthopedic surgeon.^[1] She graduated from Beaver Country Day School, an all girls school in Chestnut Hill outside of Boston, where she discovered her love of acting.^[2]

Encouraged by her father to go to college rather than immediately embark on an acting career, Alexander attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, where she concentrated in theater but also studied mathematics with an eye toward computer programming, in the event she failed as an actress. Alexander spent her junior year studying at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, where she participated in the Edinburgh University Dramatic Society. The experience, together with apparently good reviews of her performances, solidified her determination to continue acting.^[2]

Alexander's major break in acting came in 1967 when she played Eleanor Backman in the original production of Howard Sackler's The Great White Hope at Arena Stage in Washington, DC. Like her co-star, James Earl Jones, she went on to play the part both on Broadway (1968), winning a Tony Award for her performance, and in the film version (1970), which earned her an Oscar nomination.^[3] Alexander's additional screen credits include All the President's Men (1976), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), and Testament (1983), all of which earned her Oscar nods, Brubaker (1980), The Cider House Rules (1999), and Fur (2006).

Alexander portrayed Eleanor Roosevelt in two television productions, Eleanor and Franklin and Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years, and she played FDR's mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt in HBO's Warm Springs with Kenneth Branagh and Cynthia Nixon, a role which garnered her an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other television movies include Arthur Miller's Playing for Time, co-starring Vanessa Redgrave, for which Alexander won another Emmy Award; Malice in Wonderland (as famed gossip-monger Hedda Hopper); Blood & Orchids; and In Love and War (1987) co-starring James Woods, which tells the story of James and Sybil Stockdale during Stockdale's eight years as a US Navy Commander and prisoner of war in Vietnam.^[4] Alexander currently plays the protagonist, Dr. May Foster, in the HBO drama series Tell Me You Love Me. Her character, a psychotherapist, serves as the connecting link between three couples coping with relational and sexual difficulties. The show's frank portrayal of "senior" sexuality and explicit sex scenes have generated controversy.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed Alexander chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the organization that had provided partial funding for The Great White Hope at Arena Stage. Alexander moved to Washington, DC and served as chairman of the NEA until 1997. Her book, Command Performance: an Actress in the Theater of Politics (2000), describes the challenges she faced heading the NEA at a time when the 104th U.S. Congress, headed by Newt Gingrich, unsuccessfully strove to shut it down.^[2]

In 2004, Alexander, together with her husband, Edwin Sherin, joined the theater faculty at Florida State University. ^[5] She serves on various boards, including the Wildlife Conservation Society, Project Greenhope, the National Stroke Association, and Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament, and she has received the Israel Cultural Award and the Helen Caldicott Leadership Award. Alexander is also a fellow of the International Leadership Forum.^[6]

Alexander met her first husband, Robert Alexander, in the early 1960s in New York City, where both were pursuing acting careers. They had one son, Jace, born in 1964, and the couple divorced a few years later. Alexander had been acting regularly in various regional theaters when she met producer/director Edwin Sherin in Washington, DC, where he was serving as the artistic director at Arena Stage. The two became good friends and, once divorced from their respective spouses, became romantically involved, marrying in 1975. Between the two they have four children, Alexander's son, Jace, a television director, and Sherin's three sons, Tony, Geoffrey, and Jon, also from a previous marriage.^[2]

Alexander lives with her husband in the suburbs north of New York City.^{[citation needed]}

• 6 Rms Riv Vu (1972)
• Find Your Way Home (1973)
• Hamlet (1975 revival)
• The Heiress (1976 revival)
• First Monday in October (1978)
• Monday After the Miracle (1982)
• The Night of the Iguana (1988 revival)
• Shadowlands (1990)
• The Visit (1992 revival)
• The Sisters Rosensweig (1993)
• Honour (1998)

• 1971 Academy Award for Best Actress In A Leading Role (The Great White Hope, nominee)
• 1977 Academy Award for Best Actress In A Supporting Role (All The President's Men, nominee)
• 1980 Academy Award for Best Actress In A Supporting Role (Kramer Vs. Kramer, nominee)
• 1984 Academy Award for Best Actress In A Leading Role (Testament, nominee)

• 1969 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance (The Great White Hope, winner)
• 1969 Theatre World Award (The Great White Hope, winner)
• 1969 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play (The Great White Hope, winner)
• 1973 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (6 Rms Riv Vu, nominee)
• 1974 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Find Your Way Home, nominee)
• 1979 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (First Monday in October, nominee)
• 1992 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play (The Visit, nominee)
• 1992 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (The Visit, nominee)
• 1993 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play (The Sisters Rosensweig, winner)
• 1993 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (The Sisters Rosensweig, nominee)
• 1998 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Honour, nominee)

• 1976 Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama or Comedy Special (Eleanor and Franklin, nominee)
• 1977 Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama or Comedy Special (Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years, nominee)
• 1981 Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or a Special (Playing for Time, winner)
• 1984 Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or a Special (Calamity Jane, nominee)
• 1985 Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or a Special (Malice in Wonderland, nominee)
• 1999 Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, nominee)
• 2000 Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series (Law and Order, nominee)
• 2005 Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie (Warm Springs, winner)

• Alexander, Jane. Command Performance: an Actress in the Theater of Politics. PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Book Group; New York, NY, 2000. ISBN 1-89162-060-1.
• International Leadership Forum biography
• Lawson, Carol. "Howard Sackler, 52, Playwright Who Won Pulitzer Prize, Dead;" NYT (The New York Times). October 15, 1982. accessed September 8, 2006. (NOTE: payment required for full article, if retrieved online)

• Jane Alexander at the Internet Broadway Database
• Jane Alexander at the Internet Movie Database
• Jane Alexander at the TCM Movie Database
• Jane Alexander at Yahoo! Movies
• Downstage Center at the American Theatre Wing interview
• Jane Alexander in the International Leadership Forum

Awards
Preceded by Mary-Louise Parker Angels in America	Emmy Award Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie 2005 Warm Springs	Succeeded by Kelly Macdonald The Girl in the Café
Preceded by Mare Winningham Amber Waves	Emmy Award Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie 1980 Playing for Time	Succeeded by Penny Fuller The Elephant Man

Preceded by John E. Frohnmayer

Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts 1993-1997

Succeeded by Bill Ivey