Shirley Enola Knight (born July 5 1936, Goessel, Kansas) is an American actress who made her film debut in 1959. The following year she was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and again, in 1962, for her role as Paul Newman's sweetheart in Sweet Bird of Youth.
She also appeared in Sidney Lumet's The Group (1966), Richard Lester's Petulia (1968) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969). Her theatre credits include Come Back, Little Sheba, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Three Sisters, and The Vagina Monologues.
In the 1960s she abandoned Hollywood in favor of the Broadway stage, but she has since returned to film as Helen Hunt's mother in As Good As It Gets, and to television in a number of programs, including as Faith Ford's mother in Ford's short-lived sitcom Maggie Winters, and on series such as Murder, She Wrote, Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Desperate Housewives as Bree Hodge's mother-in-law Phyllis Van De Kamp. She also made a guest appearance in House M.D., season 1, episode 8, as an elderly patient. But perhaps her most impressive role was in the first segment of If These Walls Could Talk with Demi Moore, co-written and directed by Nancy Savoca. The series about the various faces of abortion had the then highest rating of any HBO series.
She has two daughters, Kaitlin Hopkins and Sophie Hopkins, by two different marriages; both are actors. Sophie is daughter of the writer John Hopkins.
Knight will once again join the recurring role as Bree's former mother in law In Desperate Housewives in season four.
Two daughters: Kaitlin Hopkins and Sophie C. Hopkins
A lovely, talented, highly promising film ingenue in the early 60s, Shirley was very vocal about her dissatisfaction with the Hollywood scene and abandoned potential film stardom for Broadway roles. She later moved to England and thrived on the London stage for a number of years before returning to Hollywood as a plus-sized character support.
Appeared in the L.A. stage and British film version of Dutchman (1967), a racial drama, which was produced by her then-husband Eugene Persson. She won the Venice Film Festival award for her cinematic performance.
She refused the play "Kennedy's Children" by Robert Patrick (III) in London, but accepted it in New York. At first rehearsal she began to read the role she'd been offered in England (a drab schoolteacher), and was astonished to learn that she was instead wanted for another lead (a glamorous actress), for which she won a "Tony" award.
Ex-mother-in-law of Daniel Passer.
Won Broadway's 1976 Tony Award as Best Actress (Featured Role - Play) for "Kennedy's Children." She was also nominated in 1997 as Best Actress (Play) for "The Young Man from Atlanta."
