JoBeth Williams

JoBeth Williams
Williams at the SAG Foundation brunch, January 7, 2007
Born	Margaret JoBeth Williams December 6, 1948 (1948-12-06) Houston, Texas, United States
Occupation	Actress, director
Years active	1974–present
Spouse	John Pasquin (m. 1982) «start: (1982)»"Marriage: John Pasquin to JoBeth Williams" Location: (linkback://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JoBeth_Williams) 2 children

JoBeth Williams (born December 6, 1948) is an American film and television actress and director, and current President of the Screen Actors Guild Foundation.

Early life

Williams was born as Margaret JoBeth Williams in Houston, Texas, the daughter of Frances Faye (née Adams), a dietitian, and Fredric Roger Williams, an opera singer and manager of a wire and cable company. Williams grew up in the South Park neighborhood, and she attended Jones High School.

She attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, intending to become a child psychologist. Instead, she turned to theater, training with Jim Barnhill and John Emigh as well as at the Trinity Repertory Company, taking voice lessons to neutralize her Texan accent. Then she moved to New York City and began to appear in television series in the mid-1970s.

Early career

Williams' first television role was on the Boston-produced first-run syndicated children's television series Jabberwocky, which debuted in 1974. Her character was named, appropriately enough, JoBeth. She joined the "Jabberwocky" cast in season two, replacing the original hostess, Joanne Sopko. The series ran until 1978. She was a regular on two soap operas, playing Carrie Wheeler on Somerset and Brandi Sheloo on Guiding Light. Williams' feature film debut came in 1979's Kramer vs. Kramer as a girlfriend of Dustin Hoffman's character, memorably quizzed by his son after being discovered walking nude to the bathroom.

Motion pictures

She is perhaps most recognized for her roles in Stir Crazy (1980) with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, and Steven Speilberg's Poltergeist (1982) as suburban housewife Diane Freeling (she reprised her character in the sequel, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, 1986). A year later she was part of the ensemble comedy-drama The Big Chill (1983). This led to her only major starring role in a studio feature film, American Dreamer (1984), opposite Tom Conti. High profile co-starring roles in Teachers (1984) with Nick Nolte, Desert Bloom (1986) with Jon Voight, Memories of Me with Billy Crystal (1988) and Blake Edwards's Switch (1991) with Ellen Barkin followed.

She is also known for starring opposite Kris Kristofferson in Oscar-winning director Franklin J. Schaffner's final film, the Vietnam POW drama Welcome Home (1989). In 1992, she re-teamed with Big Chill director Lawrence Kasdan to portray Bessie Earp in Wyatt Earp with Kevin Costner and starred as Crazy Diane/Sane Diane, a schizophrenic shut-in, in the dark independent comedy Me, Myself & I.

She also co-starred with Ed O'Neil in director John Hughes's comedy Dutch (1991) and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992) as the police detective love interest of Sylvester Stallone. In 1997, she played a domineering lesbian in the independent comedy Little City with Jon Bon Jovi and a hysterical publishing editor in Just Write with Jeremy Piven. In 2005, she appeared in the Drew Barrymore-Jimmy Fallon baseball comedy Fever Pitch.

In October 2011, she appeared with Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, Rashida Jones, and Jack Black in the birdwatching comedy The Big Year, for Twentieth Century Fox.

Television work

Williams has also gained critical acclaim for a number of performances in notable television movies, including the nuclear holocaust film The Day After (1983), Murder Ordained (1987), as Lois Burnham Wilson in My Name is Bill W. (1989) and the critically acclaimed Masterpiece Theater presentation of The Ponder Heart (2003) for director Martha Coolidge.

She earned Emmy nominations for starring as real-life characters Revé Walsh (the wife of John Walsh) in the film Adam (1983) and Mary Beth Whitehead in Baby M (1988). In 1993, she anchored the improvised Showtime dramedy Chantilly Lace with Helen Slater and Martha Plimpton.

She also had an Emmy-nominated guest starring role on Frasier and played Reggie Love in the 1995-1996 CBS series The Client (adapted from the 1994 film of the same title), which lasted only 21 episodes but gained a wider audience when it was re-broadcast in reruns on the TNT Network.

In 1995 she was nominated for an Academy Award for her 1994 live-action short, "On Hope" which starred Annette O'Toole. It was her debut as a director. She appeared on a 2006 episode of 24 as Christopher Henderson (Peter Weller)'s wife, Miriam, who literally takes a (non-fatal) bullet for her husband.

She appeared in one episode of the 1998 TV mini-series From the Earth to the Moon as Marge Slayton, the wife of Deke Slayton. The episode is part 11 of the series and titled 'The Original Wives Club.'

In 1999, JoBeth teamed with John Larroquette and Julie Benz for the CBS network situation comedy Payne. The show, which was the American television version of the hit British comedy, Fawlty Towers, lasted just ten episodes.

In 2007, she joined Dexter for a four-episode arc as the serial-killer's future mother-in-law. Also, she appeared in a memorable 2009 Criminal Minds listed as Special Guest Star in the episode, 'Empty Planet' as Professor Ursula Kent who helps the BAU with a bomb threat in Seattle.

She has played the recurring role of Bizzy Forbes-Montgomery, mother of Kate Walsh's Addison, on ABC's Private Practice since 2009.

Personal life

She is married to TV and film director John Pasquin (with whom she worked on Jungle 2 Jungle); they have two children.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1979	Kramer vs. Kramer	Phyllis Bernard
1980	Stir Crazy	Meredith
1980	Dogs of War, TheThe Dogs of War	Jessie Shannon
1982	Endangered Species	Harriet Purdue	directed by Alan Rudolph
1982	Poltergeist	Diane Freeling	Produced by Steven Speilberg
1983	Adam	Revé Walsh	Emmy nomination
1983	Big Chill, TheThe Big Chill	Karen
1983	Day After, TheThe Day After	Nurse Nancy Bauer
1984	Teachers	Lisa Hammond
1984	American Dreamer	Cathy Palmer/Rebecca Ryan
1985	Kids Don't Tell	Claudia Ryan
1986	Desert Bloom	Lois Chismore
1986	Poltergeist II: The Other Side	Diane Freeling
1986	Adam: His Song Continues	Revé Walsh
1987	Murder Ordained	Lorna Andersen
1988	Memories of Me	Lisa the Christian
1988	Baby M	Mary Beth Whitehead	Golden Globe & Emmy nomination
1989	My Name Is Bill W.	Lois Bernham Wilson
1990	Welcome Home	Dee Mobley	directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
1990	Child in the Night	Dr. Hollis
1991	Switch	Margo Brofman	Directed by Blake Edwards
1991	Dutch	Natalie	directed by John Hughes
1991	Victim of Love	Dr. Tess Palmer	aka Raw Heat
1992	Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot	Lt. Gwen Harper
1992	Me, Myself & I	Crazy Diane/Sane Diane
1992	Jonathan: The Boy Nobody Wanted	Ginny Moore
1993	Chantilly Lace	Natalie
1994	Wyatt Earp	Bessie Earp	directed by Lawrence Kasdan
1994	On Hope		Director;nominated for an Oscar
1994	Parallel Lives	Winnie Winslow
1997	When Danger Follows You Home	Anne Werden
1997	Little City	Anne
1997	Jungle 2 Jungle	Dr. Patricia Cromwell
1997	Just Write	Sidney Stone
1998	Chance of Snow, AA Chance of Snow	Maddie Parker
1999	It Came From the Sky	Alice Bridges
2001	Masterpiece Theater: The Ponder Heart	Edna Earle Ponder	directed by Martha Coolidge
2005	Into the Fire	June Sickles
2005	14 Hours	Jeanette Makins
2005	Fever Pitch	Maureen Meeks	directed by the Farrelly Brothers
2007	Sybil	Hattie
2009	TiMER	Marion
2009	Uncorked	Sophia Browning
2011	Big Year, TheThe Big Year	Charlyn

Episodic television work

• 1974 - Jabberwocky as JoBeth
• 1992 - Fish Police as voice of Angel
• 1998 - From the Earth to the Moon as Marge Slayton
• 1999 - Payne as Constance Payne (10 episodes)
• 2006-2007 - The Nine as Sheryl Kates
• 2006 - Criminal Minds as Ursula Kent - (Episode: "Empty Planet")
• 2007 - Dexter as Gail Brandon (5 episodes)
• 2009-2011 Private Practice as Bizzy Montgomery - (6 episodes)
• 2010 - The Last Film Festival as Mayor
• 2011 - NCIS as Leona Phelps (Episode: "One Last Score")
• 2011 - Hart of Dixie as Candace Hart (2 episodes)

External links

• JoBeth Williams at the Internet Movie Database
• JoBeth Williams at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• JoBeth Williams at AllRovi