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Betty Lynn Buckley biography

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Betty Lynn Buckley is an American actress best known for roles in the television show, Eight is Enough, and later film roles.

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Betty Lynn Buckley is an American actress best known for roles in the television show, Eight is Enough, and later film roles. She began her acting career at 15, in Fort Worth, Texas, for a production of Gypsy. Buckley's career has moved between theater, film, and television for decades.

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Actress born in Fort Worth, Texas. Buckley started honing her performance skills very early on, singing in her church at the age of two and taking dance lessons a year later. Her professional stage debut came at the tender age of 15 in a production of Stephen Sondheim's Gypsy. She gained additional experience by performing regularly at musical revues and various summer stock and children's theatrical productions. Betty Buckley was crowned Miss Fort Worth in 1966 while attending Texas Christian University as a journalism major and head cheerleader. When she performed at the Miss America Pageant the following year, she was spotted by a talent agent to audition in New York where she went on to sign with the International Famous Agency.

After graduating from college, she eventually made it back to New York where she landed the part of Martha Jefferson in the Broadway musical 1776. This was the first of many theater musicals she would do, including Promises, Promises and Pippin' (directed by her childhood idol Bob Fosse) early in her career, and later Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats which earned her a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical and her triumphant portrayal of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard which won her rave critical reviews and a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

Buckley's feature film debut in Brian de Palma's horror classic Carrie (1976) got her the role of stepmother opposite Dick Van Patten in the hit TV series "Eight Is Enough." She went on to appear in numerous TV shows and movies, including Tender Mercies (1983), "Cagney and Lacey," "LA Law," Woody Allen's Another Woman (1988), Roman Polanski's Frantic (1988), Wyatt Earp (1994). Buckley continues to perform successfully on both stage and screen.

© 2012 A+E Networks. All rights reserved.

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