By Jane Alexander

"An Equity card was worth its weight in gold to an actor in the early 1960s, as it still is today. But getting into the union was a "catch 22": you had to have your card to get a job and you couldn't get the job unless you had a card. One day in the winter of '62 Michael Murray auditioned me for Shaw's YOU NEVER CAN TELL that he was to direct at The Charles Playhouse in Boston. He said then and there that he wanted me for the part of Gloria and then added, "You belong to Actor's Equity don't you?" Without hesitating I replied, "Of course", a bald-faced lie if there ever was one. I grabbed the contract as fast as I could and literally ran to AEA's offices and joined the union on the spot, breathing a sigh of relief that no one ever caught me out. Until now. Please don't expel me!"

Jane Alexander made her Broadway debut in 1965 in THE GREAT WHITE HOPE, opposite James Earl Jones. She then made her film debut in the movie version of the play, and received an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of the mistress of a heavyweight boxing champion. She had a small but memorable role in the movie "All the President's Men", in 1976 as a disgruntled Republican party bookkeeper ("If you could get John Mitchell, that would be beautiful!")

Jane portrayed Eleanor Roosevelt in the TV movie Eleanor and Franklin in 1976, and in Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years in 1977. She received an Emmy Award for a supporting role in "Playing for Time" in 1981.

She was nominated for a second Oscar for her supporting role in "Kramer vs. Kramer" in 1979, and a third Oscar for her role in Testament, in 1983.

In the 1984 Alexander produced and starred in "Calamity Jane", and in 1991 she produced and starred in "A Marriage: Georgio O'Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz." In 1985 she portrayed Hedda Hopper opposite Elizabeth Taylor's Louella Parsons in the television movie "Malice in Wonderland."

In 1993 she was nominated by President Clinton to head the National Endowment for the Arts, at a time when it was under attack by conservative forces in the Congress. Alexander resigned in October 1997 and resumed her show business career.

Recently Jane Alexander has been seen on Broadway in HONOUR and in the film adaptation of Irving's "The Cider House Rules."