Katherine Helmond has never studied acting -- although she has taught the art at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and at Brown University -- and that is probably because she has been too busy training herself on the stages of America and, during the past four years, in movies and television.
Born in Galveston, Texas on July 5, Miss Helmond began acting in high school and local theatres and moved on to the Houston Playhouse and the Margo Jones Theatre in Dallas. In the years since, she has been on and off-Broadway often, collecting several major awards (the Clarence Derwent Award, a Tony nomination in New York, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award). She spent ten years in summer stock and seven years with some of the country's major repertory theatres: the A.P.A. in New York, Trinity Repertory Company in Rhode Island and Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut. She also owned and operated her own theatre in New York's Catskill Mountains resort area for three years.
Miss Helmond's television credits include most of the major series and key roles in a number of television movies, including "Wanted: The Sundance Woman," "The Legend of Lizzie Borden (as Lizzie's sister) and "Little Ladies of the Night. She played Mona in the successful sitcom "Who's The Boss?"
Three of Hollywood's finest movie directors have singled our Miss Helmond for co-starring roles -- none, incidentally, bearing any resemblance whatsoever to her role as Jessica Tate in "Soao. she appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's "Family Plot," Robert Wise's "The Hindenberg" and John Hancock's "Baby Blue Marine."
A transplanted New Yorker when she isn't working in Hollywood, the auburn-haired, grey/green-eyed Miss Helmond lives with her artist/sculptor husband, David Christian (also a Texan by birth) and their black Labrador retriever.
A vegetarian, the 5'4", 97 lb. actress has pursued the mind-and-body disciplines of yoga and is presently involved in the study of Zen Buddhism and the physical-and-mental art of Tai Chi Ch'uan.
