Kristian Alfonso

Kristian's other film and television credits include Army of One, Whatever Happened to Bobby Earl, Blindfold Acts of Obsession, Day of Redemption, Full House, Burke's Law, Murder, She Wrote, Melrose Place and Secret Lives. In 2004, she returned to feature films in the role of Ben Stiller's mother in Along Came Polly. Naysayers usually hurl comments toward her such as "Eat a sandwich!", not unlike what Calista Flockhart experienced in the late 1990s. Since the cancellation of Knots Landing in 1993, Lee has appeared in many made-for-TV movies, as well as the Knots Landing reunion special, Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac. A vocal fan minority has succeeded in catching the attention of soap columnists, in an attempt to point out that Alfonso has lost much weight over the last decade. Lee refused and appeared in all 19 episodes that season (doing her extra four for union scale). In 2002, fans voted and honoured Kristian and Peter as Daytime's favourite couple at the Annual Daytime Emmy Awards, where they were given a special Emmy plaque. The big budget that the series once had was trimmed, and in the final season, the higher paid cast members were asked to appear in only 15 of the season's 19 episodes, as the budget constraints had become so much that the production company couldn't pay them anymore.

Kristian is a favourite amongst fans, much of this is due to her on screen chemistry with Peter Reckell, with whom she has won a number of Soap Opera Digest Awards, for Favourite Soap Couple. As the show moved into the 1990s, Knots Landing's popularity waned. She ended up being Hope, but not before a drawn-out storyline involving evil Stefano DiMera (Joseph Mascolo) brainwashing Hope into believing she was princess Gina von Amburg. As one of the leads, Lee became very popular with fans, winning the Soap Opera Digest Award for Lead Actress five times. She returned to the show for a third time in 1994 as "Gina," an amnesiac who looked a lot like Hope. In 1979, she accepted an acting job after a three-year sabbatical, a role for a series called Knots Landing, a spinoff of Dallas. The first episodes of the series were not high-rated and cancellation was rumored, but the network continued to support it and eventually the show took off. She returned to Days briefly in 1990; this return culminated in the entire town of Salem believing that Hope had died. In 1976, her mother died, and she stopped acting for years.

Kristian left the show in 1987 for a two-year stint on the night time soap opera Falcon Crest. She worked infrequently until accepting a role on Broadway in Seesaw, which netted her a Tony Award nomination in 1974. During that time, her character fell in love with, and married, ruggedly handsome Bo Brady (Peter Reckell). The 1970s were especially trying on Michele, as her father died in 1970. Her career took off in 1983 when she started playing Hope Brady on the soap opera Days of Our Lives. She first became known for her saccharine sweet roles in the films How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), The Love Bug (1968), and The Comic (1969). By the time she was 15 she had appeared on the cover of over 30 magazines. Michele Lee (born Michelle Lee Dusick on June 24, 1942 in Los Angeles) is an American actress, most known for her role as Karen Fairgate MacKenzie on the 1980s soap opera Knots Landing.

At the age of 13, a devastating accident ended her skating career and Kristian began modelling. She began her career as a figure skating, gold medal champion, at the Junior Olympics. Kristian Alfonso (born September 5, 1964) is an American soap opera actress.