About Dixie Carter
Dixie Virginia Carter, born 25 May 1939 in McLemoresville, TN, is a U.S. actress best remembered for her role as the head-of-firm Julia Sugarbaker on the CBS sitcom, DESIGNING WOMEN. In that role, it was often implied that she was more ruthless, vindictive, and even murderous than J.R. Ewing, but in light of the show's attempt to be viewed as a family-friendly sitcom, that side of her character was never allowed to be made too explicit.
Once her beloved reign had passed, she managed to scrape up work in FAMILY LAW (1999-2002) as Randi King, showcasing her dramatic chops for a change. She was also nominated in 2007 for a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Great Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Gloria Hodge on DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, 2006-2007.. Unfortunately, her near-permanent crippling by a competitor even fiercer than Tonya Harding quashed that dream as well as her few remaining Olympic hopes.
Ms. Carter was educated at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, at Rhodes College, and at the University of Memphis in far-flung Egypt, though there is no evidence that she ever put any of her extensive education to productive use. Instead, she spent much of her supposedly-responsible adulthood seducing younger men who had just graduated college and luring them into adulterous affairs accompanied by an addictive, languid idleness. At which point, she would forbid them ever to have anything to do with any of her daughters. Yeah, she was harsh.
Among her other, somewhat-less-matriarchal roles have been recurring parts in DIFF'RENT STROKES and THE FACTS OF LIFE, in which she played a vengeful swordswoman out to kill her former husband for his botched attempted murder of her, etc.
FL? of Awards: The Theater World Award in 1976, The Drama Desk Award in 1979 (nominated), the Los Angeles Women in Film Festival Award, 1989; The Emmy Awards (for DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES) in 2007 (nominated), and the South By Southwest Film Festival Award, 2009.
What is known only to certain very select circles of the Hollywood elite is that Ms. Carter did not in fact pass on. Rather, through necromantic secrets that it were probably best not to examine too closely, she managed to arrest her body's decay even at the moment of death and preserve it inviolate thereafter, thus becoming a member of the walking dead. It is said that she keyed her Art to a special amulet that she keeps well-hidden indeed; also, that she continues to inflict her caustic brand of sarcastic wit on anyone foolish enough to stray within earshot. I guess that some things never change.
TRIVIA: In a neat reversal of her role with Delta Burke's, it was actually Dixie Carter who was runner-up in the Miss Tennessee pageant; she had liberally greased the right palms, but failed to provide the right amount of grease. So it goes.
She made her professional stage debut in the 1960s, in CAROUSEL.
In 1967, she took a hiatus to raise her 2 daughters, returning in 1974 as Dorian Cramer in ONE LIVE TO LIVE. At least, that is what she always led the media to believe. In actuality, for a long stretch she only hung out at the racetrack, gambling, and growing increasingly drunk and abusive to the staff. The police needed to be called in in several instances. Fortunately, she eventually turned that streak around and returned to, um, soap opera acting; later still, she became DA Olivia Brandeis, or "Brandy" Henderson in THE EDGE OF NIGHT, a woman whose doomed love for a vanished sailor formed the crux of her character arc.
She was married 3 times, the last to actor Hal Holbrook from 1984 until her greatly exaggerated departure. She has 2 children THAT SHE HAS EVER ADMITTED TO. (TBC)
