Sharon Gless

Show business is in Sharon Gless’ blood.  Her grandfather, Neil S. McCarthy, was an entertainment lawyer during Hollywood’s Golden Age and his clients included industry heavyweights such as Howard Hughes, Louis B. Mayer and Cecil B. DeMille.  Gless was the last remaining performer to be working under a standard studio contract, after being signed to a 10-year deal in 1972.

Beginning with her starring role in "Faraday & Company" in 1973, Sharon Gless has brought her own brand of humor, intelligence and dramatic flair to each of her roles. She is best known for her portrayal of New York Police Detective Christine Cagney on the hit series "Cagney & Lacey," a role that garnered her two Emmys®, a Golden Globe®, and six Emmy® nominations. Following "Cagney & Lacey," Gless re-teamed with the show's executive producer, Barney Rosenzweig, on "The Trials of Rosie O'Neill," for which she was awarded her second Golden Globe® and two more Emmy® nominations. Gless married Rosenzweig in 1991.

In 1994 and 1995, Gless and her television partner, Tyne Daly, joined together to recreate their title roles in a quartet of critically-acclaimed "Cagney & Lacey" television movies, which they fondly call "The Menopause Years."  Other starring television series include "Switch," "House Calls," and the short-lived but critically-lauded Steven Bochco half-hour, "Turnabout." Gless has received much acclaim for her dramatic roles in such television movies as "Separated By Murder," "Hard Hat and Legs," "Honor Thy Mother," "Hobson's Choice" and "Letting Go," (already said in such tv movies as so among others is redundant) as well as the mini-series "The Immigrants," "The Last Convertible," "Centennial," and Garson Kanin's "Moviola: The Scarlett O'Hara Wars," in which she played screen goddess Carole Lombard.

Gless' theatrical film credits include a featured role in the suspenseful and thought-provoking film, "The Star Chamber," which also starred Michael Douglas. She has recorded several 'Books on Tape' and starred in numerous radio plays, one of which, "'Night, Mother," for the BBC, earned Gless the International Sony Award. She has starred twice on stage in London's famed West End, the first time in 1993 with Bill Paterson, when she created the role of ‘Annie Wilkes’ in the stage version of Stephen King's "Misery" at the Criterion Theater, and four years later, opposite Tom Conti, in Neil Simon's "Chapter 2," at the Gielgud Theater.

She recently starred at Chicago's Tony Award-winning playhouse, The Victory Gardens Theater, in Claudia Allen's "Cahoots," and at Madison Square Garden with the National Company of Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues."  Gless made her stage debut in Lillian Hellman's "Watch on the Rhine" at Stage West in Springfield, Mass.

Gless is an active participant in the ongoing struggle for a woman’s right to choose, and recently joined hundreds of thousands of women in Washington D.C. for the first-ever “March For Women’s Lives,” where she stood in solidarity with her entertainment industry colleagues.