Acting During her college junior year, Houghton began appearing in
summer stock theater. In 1965, she made her Broadway debut in
A Very Rich Woman and appeared in minor television roles. Houghton made her film debut in ''
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner'' (1967) as the daughter Joanna Drayton opposite
Sidney Poitier. She auditioned for the role and believed that her aunt, who was also appearing in the film, was influential in her casting. Because of the interracial kiss depicted in the film, Houghton and Kramer received hate mail and death threats. Following ''Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
(1967), Houghton became typecast as the woman in interracial relationships. However, Houghton decided to leave behind her Hollywood career due to lackluster scripts. "I turned down these projects and returned to the theater," she explained. "It was fate. I went on to play Hedda and Nora and Nina and Kate." She returned to film acting in the 1988 comedy-drama Mr. North''. Houghton has presented lectures at venues across the country including the 2001 Fall Concert & Lectures Series at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and at
The Cosmopolitan Club in New York. She lectured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art again in June 2008, presenting "Saucy
Gamine, Reluctant Penitent, and Glorious Victor", a review of her aunt's career in Hollywood as reflected in three of her films.
Writing Houghton has also worked as a
playwright, and by 1990, she had written nine Off-Broadway and regional productions. In 1975, Houghton wrote a children's story, "The Wizard's Daughter", which is collected in the book
Two Beastly Tales, illustrated by Joan Patchen. The second story in the book is written by John Grant, Houghton's elder brother. During the early 1980s, she wrote and starred in a one-woman show
To Heaven in a Swing, detailing
Louisa May Alcott's life with her Transcendentalist father,
Amos Bronson Alcott. It received rave notices, and garnered the theater the highest box office sales in their 11-year history. Since then, it has twice been part of The York Theatre's Developmental Reading Series. ==Filmography==