Meredith Baxter

She was nominated for a Daytime Emmy award in 1993 for her work as a lesbian raising a young son in a CBS after-school special. In 2004, she returned to feature films in the role of Ben Stiller's mother in Along Came Polly. In 1992, she was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special for her work in A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story, in which she plays a divorcée who kills her ex-husband and his young lover. 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. Since Family Ties has been canceled, Meredith has been directing and starring in TV movies. Lee refused and appeared in all 19 episodes that season (doing her extra four for union scale). The second role she is well-known for is ex-flower child Elyse Keaton on the sitcom Family Ties, which aired from 1982 to 1989. 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.

She received two Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Continuing Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, in 1977 and 1978. As the show moved into the 1990s, Knots Landing's popularity waned. She first became popular in Hollywood playing the role of Nancy Lawrence Maitland on the television drama Family, from 1976 to 1980. As one of the leads, Lee became very popular with fans, winning the Soap Opera Digest Award for Lead Actress five times. She is best known for her work on two television shows. 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. From that date until their divorce in 1989, she was credited as Meredith Baxter-Birney. In 1976, her mother died, and she stopped acting for years.

After the show was canceled, the couple became engaged and were married in 1974. She worked infrequently until accepting a role on Broadway in Seesaw, which netted her a Tony Award nomination in 1974. She was married three times, most notably to actor David Birney, whom she met on the set of the sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie; she played his wife on the series. The 1970s were especially trying on Michele, as her father died in 1970. Her stepfather is sitcom writer Allan Manings. 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). Her mother is actress and sitcom creator Whitney Blake, and her father is Tom Baxter, who worked in radio. 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.

She was born in South Pasadena, California. Meredith Baxter (born June 21, 1947) is an American actress.