Elizabeth Ashley

Elizabeth Ashley Bio

Elizabeth Ann Cole, known professionally as Elizabeth Ashley, is an American actress whose career has spanned stage, film, and television for more than six decades. Born August 30, 1939, in Ocala, Florida, she trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York and emerged on Broadway in the early 1960s. She earned acclaim for her performance in the comedy Take Her, She’s Mine, winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1962.

Ashley gained wider recognition for her role in the Hollywood drama The Carpetbaggers (1964) and built a long-running television presence through the sitcom Evening Shade, where she played Aunt Frieda Evans from 1990 to 1994. Her body of work has brought Tony nominations, BAFTA and Golden Globe nods, an Emmy nomination, and induction into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2024.

Early Life and Background

Elizabeth Ann Cole was born on August 30, 1939, in Ocala, Florida. She is the daughter of Arthur Kingman Cole, a music teacher, and Lucille Ayer. Shortly after Elizabeth was born, her mother left her father and did not remarry. Ashley has drawn comparisons between her mother and the Southern matriarch Amanda Wingfield from Tennessee Williams’s play The Glass Menagerie, a literary figure that later influenced Ashley’s own interpretation of Maggie the Cat.

Ashley grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she attended local schools before enrolling at Louisiana State University. After completing her freshman year, she left the university and moved to New York to pursue acting. Once there, she supported herself by working as the Jell-O pudding girl on a television program and as a showroom model while preparing for a professional stage career.

Path to Celebrity

Ashley’s formal training began at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, where she studied alongside classmates Jessica Walter and Brenda Vaccaro. The school provided her with a disciplined approach to acting that she would carry into every corner of her work, from Broadway comedies to serious dramatic revivals. Her earliest professional opportunities came through stage work in New York, and she soon landed supporting roles that placed her in front of influential directors and producers.

Her Broadway debut in Take Her, She’s Mine (1962) marked her arrival as a serious stage talent and earned her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. The following year, she took on the leading role of Corie in the original Broadway production of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, a hit that ran for four consecutive years. The success of these productions established Ashley as one of the most promising young actresses of her generation.

Elizabeth Ashley Career

Early Career (1960-1963)

Elizabeth Ashley began her professional career in the early 1960s with a string of Broadway appearances that immediately caught the attention of critics and audiences. Her Tony-winning performance in Take Her, She’s Mine (1962) signaled the start of a significant stage career, and the award remains one of the defining early achievements of her professional life.

She followed that success with the female lead in Barefoot in the Park, Neil Simon’s original Broadway production that opened in 1963. The play became one of the era’s biggest stage hits, running for four years, and earned Ashley another Tony nomination. These early Broadway successes laid the foundation for her transition into film work in Hollywood.

Breakthrough (1964-1974)

Ashley’s breakthrough to a national audience came with the 1964 film The Carpetbaggers, in which she starred opposite George Peppard. Her performance as a supporting player in the Hollywood drama brought her BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress and helped establish her as a screen presence beyond the New York stage.

She continued to build her film résumé with roles in Ship of Fools (1965), The Third Day (1965), and later The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971) and Rancho Deluxe (1975). Her television work also expanded during this period, including appearances on programs such as Love, American Style with Burt Reynolds, and the NBC dramatization Sandburg’s Lincoln, in which she played the role of Kate.

After a decade in Hollywood, Ashley returned to Broadway in 1974 as Maggie the Cat in the American Shakespeare Theatre’s revival of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Critics responded enthusiastically to her interpretation, with New York magazine writer John Simon calling her performance astonishing and uncanny. The role brought her another Tony nomination and reinforced her reputation as a major dramatic actress.

Notable Works and Milestones

Across her career, Elizabeth Ashley has become closely identified with three signature works: the 1962 Broadway comedy Take Her, She’s Mine, which earned her a Tony Award; the 1964 film The Carpetbaggers, which brought her BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations; and the television series Evening Shade, in which she played Aunt Frieda Evans from 1990 to 1994 and earned an Emmy nomination. She has also appeared in films such as Coma (1978), Windows (1980), Paternity (1981), Dragnet (1987), and Vampire’s Kiss (1989), and she played a featured role across 14 episodes of the HBO series Treme.

Elizabeth Ashley Award Nominations

Elizabeth Ashley has accumulated a number of major award nominations across theatre, film, and television. She received BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations in 1964 for her supporting role in The Carpetbaggers, a Tony nomination for her Broadway work in Barefoot in the Park in 1963, another Tony nomination for her 1974 performance as Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and an Emmy nomination in 1991 for her portrayal of Aunt Frieda Evans in Evening Shade. Together, these nominations reflect a career recognized across multiple entertainment industries.

Elizabeth Ashley Awards Won

Elizabeth Ashley’s most prominent award win came early in her career, when she received the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1962 for her performance in Take Her, She’s Mine. Decades later, in 2024, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame, honoring her long and varied contributions to the American stage.

Elizabeth Ashley Family

Elizabeth Ashley was born to Arthur Kingman Cole, a music teacher, and Lucille Ayer. Her mother left the family shortly after Elizabeth was born and did not remarry. Ashley grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and has often drawn on her Southern upbringing when discussing her approach to acting.

Personal Life

Elizabeth Ashley has been married three times. Her first husband was actor James Farentino, and her second husband was actor George Peppard, her leading man in The Carpetbaggers. The couple had a son, Christian. She later married James McCarthy in 1975, and they divorced in 1981. Between her second and third marriages, she was in a relationship with writer Tom McGuane. In her 1978 autobiography, Actress: Postcards from the Road, Ashley reflected openly on her marriages and her career in Hollywood and on Broadway.