Michele Lee is known for her role as Karen Fairgate MacKenzie on the prime-time soap opera Knots Landing, for which she was nominated for a 1982 Emmy Award and won the Soap Opera Digest Award for Best Actress in 1988,1991, and 1992.
19 Facts About Michele Lee
2.
Michele Lee was the only performer to appear in all 344 episodes of the series.
3.
Michele Lee made her movie debut in the film version of the latter in 1967.
4.
Michele Lee was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1974 for Seesaw and for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 2001 for The Tale of the Allergist's Wife.
5.
Michele Lee played the title role in the 1998 TV film Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story and Madame Morrible in the Broadway musical Wicked in 2015.
6.
Michele Lee played Michele Burton, a clerk in a hotel newsstand, with support from Stephen Collins.
7.
In 1979, Michele Lee accepted the role of Karen Fairgate on Knots Landing, a spin-off of the highly popular Dallas.
8.
Television personality Joan Rivers commented that Michele Lee was, in theory, the "First Lady of Knots Landing" during her guest appearance on The Late Show, which Rivers hosted at the time.
9.
Michele Lee thus played a single mother on Knots Landing at the same time she was becoming one in real life.
10.
Michele Lee said that when her character took off her wedding ring in a 1982 episode, she was taking off her real wedding band.
11.
Michele Lee won the Soap Opera Digest Award for Best Lead Actress three times, and was nominated for an Emmy in 1982 for "Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series".
12.
Six years later, Michele Lee directed her first of several episodes of the series.
13.
However, Michele Lee insisted on appearing in all 19 episodes that season, doing her extra four episodes for "union scale" pay.
14.
Michele Lee starred in the reunion miniseries Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac, and portrayed novelist Jacqueline Susann in the television biopic Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story.
15.
In 2004, Michele Lee returned to feature films in the role of Ben Stiller's character's mother in Along Came Polly.
16.
In 2010, Michele Lee did voice work for an episode of the animated comedy series Family Guy.
17.
Michele Lee returned to Broadway in 2015 to star as Madame Morrible in the musical Wicked.
18.
In 1963, Michele Lee met actor James Farentino on the set of the play How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and in 1966, they were married.
19.
Michele Lee married producer and writer Fred Rappaport in 1987.