Shirley Enola Knight was an American actress. In her nearly sixty year long career, she has been nominated for two Oscar awards and eight Emmy awards, winning three Emmys. On House, M.D., she portrayed the elderly clinic patient with crushes on both the celebrity Ashton Kutcher and Gregory House in the Season 1 episode Poison.
Knight started off as a contract player with Warner Brothers. She took advantage of breaks between movies to work on television and then became a steadily working actress in both media starting in the late 1950s. She was soon nominated for two Oscars, in 1961 for The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and in 1962 for The Sweet Bird of Youth. On television, she won her first Emmy in 1988 for a guest appearance on thirtysomethings, and in 1995 scored a double: a supporting actress award for Indictment: The McMartin Trial, and for a guest appearance on NYPD Blue. The role in Indictment also won her a Golden Globe Award. She received her most recent nomination in 2004 for her role as Bree Van de Kamp's mother on Desperate Housewives. Her over 160 credits also include featured roles in Buckskin, Friendly Persuasion, Return to Earth, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, Endless Love, As Good As It Gets, Maggie Winters, Angel Eyes, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Grandma's Boy, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.
Knight died on April 22, 2020 at the age of 83.
Connections[]
- Appeared with Zena Grey and James LeGros in Redwood Highway
- Appeared with Željko Ivanek and Wendy Makkena on The Mob Doctor
- Appeared with Jayma Mays and Dahlia Salem in Paul Blart: Mall Cop
- Appeared with Lyndsy Fonseca on Desperate Housewives
- Appeared with Azura Skye in Thanks to Gravity and Sexual Life
- Appeared with Robin Tunney in Open Window
- Appeared with Joel Moore in Grandma's Boy
- Appeared with Myndy Crist on Cold Case
- Appeared with Steve Valentine on Crossing Jordan
- Appeared with Jack Conley in A House on a Hill
- Appeared with Amy Irving on Law & Order: SVU
- Appeared with Cynthia Watros in P.S. Your Cat Is Dead!
- Appeared with R. Lee Ermey and Meat Loaf in The Salton Sea
- Appeared with Candice Bergen in Mary & Tim
- Appeared with Donal Logue in Diabolique
- Appeared with Alan Rosenberg on Cybill
- Appeared with Jake Richardson in Fudge
- Appeared with Allan Rich in A Part of the Family
- Appeared with Dennis Boutsikaris and Donal Logue in The Yarn Princess and The Equalizer
- Appeared with Janel Moloney in To Save a Child
- Appeared with Željko Ivanek in The Sender