Shirley Knight

Knight was born in Goessel, Kansas, the daughter of Virginia (née Webster; 1916-1977) and Noel Johnson Knight (1913-1985), an oil company executive. She had a brother and a sister. She spent her young life in Mitchell, Kansas, and later lived in Lyons, Kansas, where she graduated from high school. She began studying to be an opera singer at age 11. At the age of 14, she wrote a short story that was published in a national magazine. Knight later attended Phillips University and Wichita State University. After studying at the Pasadena Theatre School she began her film career in 1959. She then went to New York and began her theatre career. She trained in acting with Jeff Corey, Erwin Piscator, Lee Strasberg, and Uta Hagen at HB Studio. ==Career==

in The Defection of Simas Kudirka (1978) Knight's feature films include The Group (1966), The Dutchman (1967), Petulia (1968), The Rain People (1969), Secrets (1971), Juggernaut (1974), Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979), Endless Love (1981), Angel Eyes (2001), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002), Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009), Our Idiot Brother (2011) and Elevator (2011), in which she plays one of several people trapped in a Wall Street elevator with a bomber. Knight was cast in 1958 and 1959 as Mrs. Newcomb in 20 of the 29 episodes of the television series Buckskin, with Tom Nolan, Sally Brophy, and Mike Road. She became a Warner Brothers Television contract star who while on breaks from filming feature films appeared in television series such as Maverick, Bourbon Street Beat, Sugarfoot, Cheyenne, and The Roaring 20s. A life member of The Actors Studio, Knight's stage credits include Three Sisters (1964), We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1966), ''Kennedy's Children (1975), which earned her the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play, and A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur'' (1979). She was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play twice, for Landscape of the Body and The Young Man from Atlanta, for which she received another Tony nomination. She appeared in the first segment of If These Walls Could Talk. She also had a recurring role on Desperate Housewives. ==Personal life and death==

Knight was married to American actor and producer Gene Persson from 1959 until their divorce in 1969. They had one child, actress Kaitlin Hopkins (born February 1, 1964). Her second marriage was to English writer John Hopkins from 1969 until his death in 1998. They had one child, elementary school teacher Sophie C. Hopkins. One month after suffering a fall at an assisted living facility, Knight died on April 22, 2020, at age 83, at her daughter Kaitlin Hopkins's home in San Marcos, Texas. ==Acting credits==

Film Television Theatre ==Awards and nominations==