Early career Clayburgh began acting as a student in summer stock and, after graduating, joined the Charles Street Repertory Theater in
Boston, where she met another up-and-coming actor and future
Academy Award-winning star,
Al Pacino, in 1967. They met after starring in
Jean-Claude Van Itallie's play
America, Hurrah. They had a five-year romance and moved back together to New York City. In 1968, Clayburgh debuted off-Broadway in the double bill of
Israel Horovitz's
The Indian Wants the Bronx and ''It's Called the Sugar Plum
, also starring Pacino. Clayburgh and Pacino were cast in "Deadly Circle of Violence", an episode of the ABC television series NYPD, premiering November 12, 1968. Clayburgh at the time was also appearing on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow'', playing the role of Grace Bolton. Her father would send the couple money each month to help with finances. She eventually made her Broadway debut in 1968 in
The Sudden and Accidental Re-Education of Horse Johnson, co-starring
Jack Klugman, which ran for five performances. In 1969, she starred in an off-Broadway production of the Henry Bloomstein play
Calling in Crazy, at the
Andy Warhol-owned Fortune theatre. She was in a TV pilot that did not sell,
The Choice (1969) and appeared off Broadway in
The Nest (1970). In 1969, Clayburgh made her screen debut in
The Wedding Party, written and directed by
Brian De Palma.
The Wedding Party was filmed in 1963 (during which Clayburgh was at Sarah Lawrence) but not released until six years later. The film focuses on a soon-to-be groom and his interactions with various relatives of his fiancée and members of the wedding party; Clayburgh played the bride-to-be. Her co-stars included
Robert De Niro, in one of his early film roles, and
Jennifer Salt. In his review from
The New York Times,
Howard Thompson wrote, "As the harassed engaged couple, two newcomers, Charles Pfluger and Jill Clayburgh, are as appealing as they can be."
Broadway success Clayburgh attracted attention when she appeared in the Broadway musical
The Rothschilds (1970–72) which ran for 502 performances. She then went on to play
Desdemona opposite
James Earl Jones in the 1971 production of
Othello in
Los Angeles, and had another Broadway success with
Pippin (1972–75), which ran for 1,944 performances.
Clive Barnes of
The New York Times found Clayburgh to be "all sweet connivance as the widow out to get her man." During this time, Clayburgh had a string of brief character parts in film and television. Some of these include
The Telephone Book (1971), ''
Portnoy's Complaint (1972), The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973) and The Terminal Man'' (1974), opposite
George Segal. After guest-starring on an episode of
The Snoop Sisters, Clayburgh played
Ryan O'Neal's ex-wife in
The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973) and starred in a TV pilot that was not picked up,
Going Places (1973). She also guest starred on
Medical Center,
Maude, and
The Rockford Files. She hosted
Saturday Night Live on February 28, 1976 (Season 1, Episode 15) with musical guest,
Leon Redbone. She later returned to Broadway for
Tom Stoppard's
Jumpers, which ran for 48 performances. Despite her success on Broadway, it was film acting that really excited Clayburgh: "One of the things I like about the movies is the adventure of it," she said. "I like going to different places and I like doing a different scene every day." Clayburgh was praised for her performances in the TV movies
Hustling (1975), in which she played a prostitute, and
The Art of Crime (1975).
Hustling was a departure for her: "Before I did
Hustling I was always cast as a nice wife. I wasn't very good at it. Then with
Hustling, it was a nice role and it was a departure. People saw a different dimension." "It changed my career," Clayburgh said. "It was a part that I did well, and suddenly people wanted me.
Sidney Furie saw me, and wanted me for
Gable and Lombard."
An Unmarried Woman and film stardom Clayburgh was cast as
Carole Lombard in the 1976 biopic
Gable and Lombard with
James Brolin as
Clark Gable.
Variety called it "a film with many major assets, not the least of which is the stunning and smashing performance of Clayburgh as Carole Lombard" and
Time Out London felt she "produced a very modern version of the Lombard larkishness."
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times suggested that her performance "comes off better" than Brolin's Gable, as "she appears to be creating a character whenever the fearfully bad screenplay allows it." Despite this, he felt both actors were miscast as the famous couple, writing further, "Miss Clayburgh could be an interesting actress, but there are always problems when small performers try to portray the kind of giant legends that Gable and Lombard were. Because both Gable and Lombard are still very much alive in their films on television and in repertory theaters, there is difficulty in responding to Mr. Brolin and Miss Clayburgh in any serious way." She starred in the acclaimed TV movie
Griffin and Phoenix (1976) co-starring with
Peter Falk. It tells the story of two ill-fated middle-aged characters who both face a terminal cancer diagnosis and have months left to live. Notably, Clayburgh developed the same type of cancer her character had in this film, succumbing to it in 2010. Also in 1976, she had her first big box office success playing the love interest of
Gene Wilder's character in the comedy-mystery
Silver Streak, also starring
Richard Pryor. Critics felt Clayburgh had little to do in
Silver Streak, and
The New York Times called her "an actress of too much intelligence to be able to fake identification with a role that is essentially that of a liberated ingenue." In 1977, she had another hit with
Semi-Tough, a comedy set in the world of American professional football, which also starred
Burt Reynolds and
Kris Kristofferson. Clayburgh played Barbara Jane Bookman, who has a subtle love triangle relationship with both Reynolds and Kristofferson's characters. Vincent Canby liked her performance, writing, "Miss Clayburgh, who's been asked to play zany heroines in
Gable and Lombard and
Silver Streak by people who failed to provide her with material, has much better luck this time. She's charming," and
The Washington Post enjoyed her chemistry with Reynolds: "Reynolds and Clayburgh look wonderful together. They seem to harmonize in a way that would only be more apparent - and make their eventual recognition of being in love seem more appropriate." Both
Semi-Tough and
Silver Streak earned her a reputation "as a popular modern stylist of screwball comedy" and
The Guardian noted how Clayburgh "had the kind of warmth and witty sophistication barely seen in Hollywood since Carole Lombard and
Jean Arthur". Clayburgh's performance garnered some of the best reviews of her career:
Roger Ebert called the film "a journey that Mazursky makes into one of the funniest, truest, sometimes most heartbreaking movies I've ever seen. And so much of what's best is because of Jill Clayburgh, whose performance is, quite simply, luminous. Clayburgh takes chances in this movie. She's out on an emotional limb. She's letting us see and experience things that many actresses simply couldn't reveal" while
The New York Times wrote, "Miss Clayburgh is nothing less than extraordinary in what is the performance of the year to date. In her we see intelligence battling feelingreason backed against the wall by pushy needs." Writing for
The New Yorker, veteran critic
Pauline Kael noted: In addition to her Oscar nomination, Clayburgh also earned her first
Golden Globe nomination for
Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama (both of which she lost to
Jane Fonda for
Coming Home) and won the
Best Actress Award at the
Cannes Film Festival, which she and
Isabelle Huppert shared. During this time, she turned down the lead in
Norma Rae, a film that earned
Sally Field her first Oscar. Still, in 1979, Clayburgh had a career peak after starring in two movies that garnered her widespread acclaim. The first was
Bernardo Bertolucci's
La Luna (1979), which she made in Italy. The film presents an incestuous relationship between a mother and her drug-addicted son, and was poorly received at the time. Clayburgh agreed to star in this film because she felt that "most great roles explore something that is socially taboo." Bertolucci was especially impressed with her work, having complimented her ability "to move from one extreme to the other in the same shot, be funny and dramatic within the same scene." Despite the film's controversy, Clayburgh's performance as a manipulative opera singer was generally praised: Critic Richard Brody called it "her most extravagant role" and a review in
The New York Times felt she was "extraordinary under impossible circumstances." Also, in the
London Review of Books,
Angela Carter wrote, "Jill Clayburgh, seizing by the throat the opportunity of working with a great European director, gives a bravura performance: she is like the life force in person". Her second and last film of 1979 was
Alan J. Pakula's
Starting Over, a romantic comedy with
Burt Reynolds and
Candice Bergen. Pakula hired her because, "the extraordinary thing is that she's so many people. In a Jill Clayburgh movie you don't know what you're going to get."
Starting Over earned her a second Oscar and Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. Also that year, she later returned to the stage with
In the Boom Boom Room as a go-go dancer. In 1980, she was cast opposite
Michael Douglas in a romantic comedy, ''
It's My Turn'', in which she teaches the proof of the
snake lemma. Novelist
Eleanor Bergstein, who had written the screenplay, was delighted with Clayburgh's casting. "To me," says Bergstein, "Jill is one of the few actresses who looks like she has imagined her life, made her life happen. I think that divides women in a way, women whose intelligence animates their faces. They have willed themselves to be beautiful, to be exactly who they are. Their minds inform their faces. I think Jill is like that. Lots of actresses are just the opposite." Clayburgh herself was attracted to the part because "Kate is the closest person to myself that I have ever played. People always say, 'Oh,
An Unmarried Woman, that's you.' But really, of course, it's not." The following year, she was a conservative Supreme Court justice in
First Monday in October, a comedy with
Walter Matthau. Her performance was praised and earned her a Golden Globe nomination for
Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical.
Career setbacks and TV films By the mid-1980s, Clayburgh appeared in fewer and less successful films, despite turning to more dramatic material. She played a valium addict and documentarist in ''
I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can'' (1981), written by David Rabe, her husband. "I guess people look at me and they think I'm a ladylike character," said Clayburgh, "but it's not what I do best. I do best with characters who are coming apart at the seams." The film received negative reviews, but
Janet Maslin of
The New York Times liked Clayburgh's performance and wrote that she played her high-powered career woman "earnestly and vigorously." In the controversial
Hanna K. (1983), she was a court-appointed Israeli-American lawyer assigned to defend a Palestinian man for director
Costa-Gavras. The film was a box office failure and hurt her career. Upset by the film's reception, Clayburgh gave up cinema for three years, during which time she was busy bringing up her children. As her feature film career waned, Clayburgh began accepting roles in television films, including
Where Are the Children? (1986) as a divorcée who gets revenge on her ex-spouse, and
Miles to Go... (1986). She returned to film in 1987 when she drew praise for portraying a shallow, sophisticated
Manhattan magazine writer in
Andrei Konchalovsky's little-seen independent film
Shy People; although the film flopped, this was her most substantial film role after
Hanna K. After
Shy People, Clayburgh took on a series of roles in the television films
Who Gets the Friends? (1988) and
Fear Stalk (1989), in which she portrayed a budding cartoonist and a strong-willed soap opera producer, respectively. She then played an investigator studying a child-abuse case in
Unspeakable Acts (1990). In 1991, Clayburgh earned decent reviews for her role as English actress and singer
Jill Ireland in the television biopic
Reason for Living: The Jill Ireland Story (1991), which detailed Ireland's struggle to beat cancer and to help her adopted son get past his heroin addiction. Although Clayburgh never met Ireland, she read her book and listened to taped interviews with her in preparation. Ken Tucker of
Entertainment Weekly praised Clayburgh's accent in
Reason for Living, writing, "Quite aside from her smooth assurance, Clayburgh pulls off Ireland's English accent without calling attention to herself." This performance led
The New York Times to write that her small-screen work was "a sign of the times: older actresses accustomed to playing strong roles are finding their best work [in film] on television." Gradually, Clayburgh shifted into being more of a supporting character actress in the 1990s, taking on roles as diverse as an antagonistic judge in
Trial: The Price of Passion (1992) and the interfering wife of
Alan Alda's character in
Whispers in the Dark (1992). After appearing in
Ben Gazzara's
Beyond the Ocean (1990), which was shot in
Bali, and the unreleased ''Pretty Hattie's Baby
(1991), she became typecast as an attractive maternal figure: she was the long-missing matriarch in Rich in Love (1992), a wheelchair-user mother in Firestorm: 72 Hours in Oakland'' (1993), and
Eric Stoltz's single mother in
Naked in New York (1993). A review in
People magazine felt Clayburgh "[did] her best as the footloose mother" in
Rich in Love, while Roger Ebert praised her casting in
Naked in New York as "exactly on target". She also played
Kitty Menendez, who was murdered by her sons, in
Honor Thy Father and Mother: The True Story of the Menendez Murders (1993), a role which
Variety perceived to be "incomplete, but that has more to do with the script than Clayburgh's performance." She continued to play concerned, protective mothers in
For the Love of Nancy (1994),
The Face on the Milk Carton (1995),
Going All the Way (1997),
Fools Rush In (1997),
When Innocence Is Lost (1997) and
Sins of the Mind (1997), and was in "good form" as the forceful, pushy
stage mother in
Crowned and Dangerous (1997). In the late 1990s, Clayburgh guest-starred on episodes of
Law & Order and
Frasier, and starred in another short-lived sitcom, ''
Everything's Relative (1999), and a short-lived series, Trinity'' (1999).
Later career and final roles After appearing in
My Little Assassin (1999) and
The Only Living Boy in New York (2000), she had her first prominent lead role since
Hanna K. and
Shy People in
Eric Schaeffer's comedy
Never Again (2001). Roger Ebert praised Clayburgh "for do[ing] everything humanly possible to create a character who is sweet and believable" and called it "a reminder of Clayburgh's gifts as an actress", while
Stephen Holden of the
New York Times credited her for lending "emotional weight" to the part of "a desperately lonely 54-year-old single mother." Also in 2001, she appeared in
Falling and had a semi-recurring role on
Ally McBeal as Ally's mother and on
The Practice, before becoming a regular in another short-lived show,
Leap of Faith (2002). She returned to off-Broadway as a falsely convicted mother-of-two in
Bob Balaban's production of
The Exonerated (2002–04) with
Richard Dreyfuss. Writing for
Variety magazine,
Charles Isherwood commended Clayburgh for playing her part "with clear-eyed dignity." She then appeared in
Phenomenon II (2003) and received an Emmy nomination for guest appearances in the series
Nip/Tuck in 2005. That year she continued her resurgent stage career in
A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, which ran for 69 performances. More successful was
The Busy World is Hushed (2005–06) on off-Broadway, where she replaced
Christine Lahti and played a widowed Episcopal minister and scholar.
Variety critic David Rooney praised Clayburgh's "wisdom and quiet humor while refusing to define Hannah's questionable behavior and convictions as right or wrong, sound or unsound" and her "embrace of the woman's uncertainties, mak[ing] her all the more human." In 2006, she appeared on Broadway in
Neil Simon's
Barefoot in the Park with
Patrick Wilson and
Amanda Peet; she played Peet's mother, a role originated by
Mildred Natwick. It ran for 109 performances and was met with mixed reviews. Still, Clayburgh's performance drew praise and the
New York Times critic
Ben Brantley lauded "her winning way with dialogue that can make synthetic one-liners sound like filigree epigrams. Trim and dazzlingly blond, she is a glamorous eyeful in
Isaac Mizrahi's rich dowager costumes." She returned to the screen that same year as a therapist's eccentric wife in
Ryan Murphy's all-star ensemble
dramedy Running with Scissors, an autobiographical tale of teenage angst and dysfunction based on the book by
Augusten Burroughs; also starring
Annette Bening,
Gwyneth Paltrow and
Evan Rachel Wood, Clayburgh's supporting performance earned her a
Best Supporting Actress nomination by the
St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association. By the end of 2006, Clayburgh played a wistful eccentric in what was her last stage appearance,
The Clean House (2006–07) on off-Broadway, and was praised for her "goofy lightness" by
The Post Gazette. During 2007–2009, Clayburgh appeared in the
ABC television series Dirty Sexy Money, playing the wealthy socialite Letitia Darling. She then played
Jake Gyllenhaal's mother in
Edward Zwick's
Love & Other Drugs (2010) and
Kristen Wiig's mother in
Paul Feig's acclaimed blockbuster comedy
Bridesmaids (2011), which was the last film that Clayburgh completed. ==Personal life==