Movies

Stockard Channing (born Susan Antonia Williams Stockard; February 13, 1944) is an American actress. She played Betty Rizzo in the film Grease (1978) and First Lady Abbey Bartlet in the NBC television series The West Wing (1999–2006). She also originated the role of Ouisa Kittredge in the stage and film versions of Six Degrees of Separation; the 1993 film version earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. She was also one of two comic foils of The Number Painter on Sesame Street.

Channing won the 1985 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the Broadway revival of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, and won Emmy Awards for The West Wing and The Matthew Shepard Story, both in 2002. She won a Daytime Emmy Award in 2004 for her role in Jack. Her film appearances include The Fortune (1975), The Big Bus (1976), The Cheap Detective (1978), Heartburn (1986), To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), Up Close & Personal (1996), Practical Magic (1998), and Woody Allen's Anything Else (2003). She also played the recurring role of Veronica Loy on the CBS drama The Good Wife (2012–16).

Early life and education
Channing was born in Manhattan, and she grew up on the Upper East Side. She was the daughter of Mary Alice (née English), who came from a large Brooklyn Irish Catholic family, and Lester Napier Stockard (died 1960), who was in the shipping business. Her elder sister is Lesly Stockard Smith, former mayor of Palm Beach, Florida.

Channing is an alumna of the Madeira School in McLean, Virginia, a boarding school for girls, which she attended after starting at the Chapin School in New York City. She studied history and literature at Radcliffe College of Harvard University in Massachusetts and graduated summa cum laude in 1965. She received her acting training at HB Studio in New York City.