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Stockard Channing (born February 13, 1944) is an
American stage, film and television
actress. She is known for her portrayal of
First Lady Abbey Bartlet in the
NBC television series The West Wing; for playing
Betty Rizzo in the film
Grease; and for her role in both the
stage and
screen versions of
Six Degrees of Separation.
Early life
Channing was born
Susan Antonia Williams Stockard in
New York City, the daughter of Mary Alice (
née English), who came from a large
Brooklyn-based
Irish Catholic family, and Lester Napier Stockard, who was in the shipping business and died in 1960.
[Stockard Channing takes wing][Stockard Channing at Biography.com.] She grew up on the
Upper East Side.
[Stockard Channing at Yahoo! Movies.] She is an alumna of
The Madeira School, a
Virginia boarding school for girls, after starting out at The Chapin School in New York City. Then, she studied history and literature at
Radcliffe College, and graduated in 1965. She married her first husband,
Walter Channing, in 1963 when she was 19 and kept the
amalgamated name "Stockard Channing" after they divorced in 1967.
[Zoe Williams. "Lousy with dignity," The Guardian, May 11, 2002.]