Born Susan Stockard and raised on Manhattan's posh Upper East Side, the future Stockard Channing inherited substantial wealth at an early age when her father died in 1950. After attending NYC's prestigious Chapin School and earning a high school diploma from the Madeira School in Virginia, the intelligent actress went on to graduate summa cum laude at Radcliffe and, despite having no formal theater training, act for the first time in a Harvard University production of "The Threepenny Opera". The rebellious native New Yorker, who encountered such potent thespians in the Boston theater community as Tommy Lee Jones, John Lithgow and James Woods, married young (acquiring her last name) and joined the experimental Theatre Company of Boston in the mid-60s, debuting professionally in "The Investigation" (1966). She surfaced later off-Broadway with the group's "Adaptation/Next" and soon after made her Broadway debut in "Two Gentleman of Verona" (1971), her first collaboration with playwright John Guare.
Channing's career has alternated between incredible highs and abysmal lows. Following small feature roles in "The Hospital" (1971) and "Up the Sandbox" (1972), she made a strong impression in her TV-movie debut as a formerly overweight woman taking revenge on those who have spurned her in "The Girl Most Likely To . . ." (ABC, 1973), a camp classic written by Joan Rivers. Though she was on top of the world while playing the dizzy heiress opposite Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson in Mike Nichols' "The Fortune" (1975), its tepid reception, coupled with disappointments like "The Big Bus" and "Sweet Revenge" (both 1976), made it difficult for her to get an interview, let alone a part. Her success as the tough-talking, Rizzo in the movie version of "Grease" (1978, still her highest-grossing movie) revived things briefly, but two failed CBS-TV series, "Stockard Channing in Just Friends" (1979) and the equally short-lived "The Stockard Channing Show" (1980), transformed the "it" girl into the "out on the street" girl. Counseled by her agent to leave Hollywood and focus on theater work in New York, she finally came into her own with a number of highly acclaimed, award-winning stage performances.
After returning to Broadway succeeding Lucie Arnaz as the female lead in "They're Playing Our Song" (1980-81), Channing landed the part of the hopelessly optimistic mother of a severely spastic child in a 1982 New Haven production of Peter Nichols' "A Day in the Life of Joe Egg". When she reprised the role on Broadway, her expert comic timing combined with an underlying depth of pathos earned her the 1985 Tony as Best Actress in a Play. She renewed her association with Guare in the 1986 Broadway revival of "The House of Blue Leaves" at Lincoln Center, garnering another Tony nomination as Bunny, the tart-tongued mistress of failed songwriter Artie (John Mahoney), and then teamed with the playwright (again at Lincoln Center) for his touchstone satire of the 80s, "Six Degrees of Separation" (1990). Drawing from her own blueblood background, Channing won kudos (including an OBIE and yet another Tony nomination) for her remarkable performance as the trendy, superficial society matron Ouisa Kittredge, a part she played in London as well. She also acted in the 1992 Lincoln Center production of Guare's "Four Baboons Adoring the Sun".
Though she has enjoyed wide exposure on film and TV, Channing is another stage star who has not quite achieved a comparable popularity for her work before the cameras, despite earning Emmy nominations for the CBS miniseries "Echoes in the Darkness" (1987) and as Best Guest Actress in a Drama (1993) for the Disney series "Avonlea", not to mention taking home a CableACE Award for the Harvey Fierstein-scripted "Tidy Endings" (HBO, 1988, adapted from his play "On Tidy Endings"). Channing's feature career received a major boost when she reprised the role of Ouisa in the film version of "Six Degrees of Separation" (1993), for which she snagged a Best Actress Oscar nomination. She then played the battered wife who gets a physical and emotional make-over from drag queen Patrick Swayze in "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar" and an eye-patch wearing woman from Harvey Keitel's past, the unfortunately-named Ruby McNutt, in "Smoke" (both 1995). After a wordless cameo as a suicide whose death leads to the formation of "The First Wives Club", Channing went on to support Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer in "Up Close and Personal" and appeared as the nefarious madam Mrs. Allworthy in "Moll Flanders" (all 1996).
Finding a wealth of plumb roles for an actresses of a certin age on TV, Channing was equally busy on the small screen, starring in the acclaimed USA Network film "An Unexpected Family" (1996) and its 1998 sequel "An Unexpected Life" as a single career woman forced by circumstances to care for her sister's children. She anchored the star-studded cast of "Edie & Pen" (HBO, 1996) and received an Independent Spirit Award nomination as Best Supporting Female for her performance as Rachel Luckman, one half of the infertile couple (with Peter Riegert) in "The Baby Dance" (also 1998), a Showtime movie based on the play by Jane Anderson. She still managed to find time for the theater, acting at Lincoln Center in Tom Stoppard's "Hapgood" (1995), playing Regina in the 1997 Lincoln Center revival of Lillian Hellman's "The Little Foxes" and portraying Eleanor of Aquitaine opposite Laurence Fishburne's King Henry II in the 1999 revival of James Goldman's "The Lion in Winter" at NYC's Roundabout Theatre. For the big screen, she put the moves on Paul Newman as a cop and former lover in Robert Benton's "Twilight" (1998), a part written with her in mind by the writer-director. A change of pace role came with her turn as a flamboyant stage actress (a composite character) in "Isn't She Great" (1999), a period comedy-drama about Jacqueline Susann starring Bette Midler as the pulp writer.
In addition, Channing's recurring role as First Lady Abby Bartlett on NBC's hit drama "The West Wing" has garnered the seasoned actress an abundance of praise, including a succession of supporting actress Emmy nominations--She was victorious in 2002, the same year she won the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie Emmy for her role in the true-life TV-movie "The Matthew Shepard" (2002), playing the bereaved mother of openly gay college student Matthew Shepard, killed in an act of senseless violence and cruelty. Determined to use her grief to help prevent hate crimes and ensure that no parent would have to endure what she had, Judy Shepard formed a foundation in her son's name to reach out to the youth of America and the actress adroitly portrayed the evolution from victimized mother to visionary peacemaker. (Channing also garnered a 2002 Screen Actors Guild award for the role). Channing as also appeared as part of the all-female cast of the TV mini "A Girl Thing" (2001), starred in "The Business of Strangers" (2001) as a hard-edged career woman caught in a game of one-upsmanship with a young but equally competitive rival (Julia Stiles), and portrayed Klara Hitler, the mother of the most infamous political figure of the 20th Century, in CBS' miniseries "Hitler: The Rise of Evil" (2003). In 2003 she also squeezed in a special, bravura one-night performance, adroitly assuming Bette Davis' saucy character Margo Channing in an all-star Los Angeles production of "All About Eve" to benefit an actors' charity. Channing also took on a small role in the Merchant-Ivory producution of the bestseller "Le Divorce" (2003), playing mother to a pair of American expatirate sisters in Paris. That same year she also appeared in writer-director Woody Allen's lesser effort "Anything Else" (2003).
As she was eventually freed from her West Wing duties in favor of a new administration, Channing continued to expand her horizons: in 2004 she starred in the Showtime telepic "Jack," as the mother of a young man struggling to understand why his father left the family for another man; in 2005 she had a lively supporting turn in the romantic comedy "Must Love Dogs"; and she finally found the sitcom success that eluded her in her early career with the critically admired "Out of Practice" (CBS, 2005 - ) as tart-tongued but sensitive Dr. Lydia Barnes, the matriarch of a neurotic, dysfunctional clan of doctors who is coping with her recent divorce from her longtime husband (Henry Winkler).