Michele Lee

In 2004, she returned to feature films in the role of Ben Stiller's mother in Along Came Polly. All four albums released by the group went platinum. 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. After the first album, 98 Degrees left Motown for its parent company, Universal Records. Lee refused and appeared in all 19 episodes that season (doing her extra four for union scale). After building popularity with their appearance in the movie Mulan, singing "True to Your Heart", a duet with labelmate Stevie Wonder, their success broke out in late 1998 with their album 98° and Rising, which included the hit single "I Do (Cherish You)". 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. The group originally singed to the Motown label in the mid-1990s.

As the show moved into the 1990s, Knots Landing's popularity waned. It consists of four vocalists: brothers Nick and Drew Lachey, as well as Justin Jeffre and Jeff Timmons. As one of the leads, Lee became very popular with fans, winning the Soap Opera Digest Award for Lead Actress five times. 98 Degrees are an American boy band formed in Los Angeles, but whose members are originally from Ohio. 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. In 1976, her mother died, and she stopped acting for years.

She worked infrequently until accepting a role on Broadway in Seesaw, which netted her a Tony Award nomination in 1974. The 1970s were especially trying on Michele, as her father died in 1970. 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). 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.