While Blair Brown may be best recalled for her award-winning starring role in "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd" (NBC, 1987-88; Lifetime, 1988-91), she has also had a distinguished, albeit idiosyncratic career as a stage and film actress. Born and raised in the Washington, DC area, the petite, attractive auburn-haired performer had originally intended to pursue a medical career. She whimsically applied to the National Theatre School of Canada where she spent three years in training. A role in the revue "Love and Maple Syrup" in Ottawa led to several years of employment with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Company and other regional theaters, honing her craft in such stage productions as "The Merchant of Venice", "A Doll's House" and "The Crucible". Brown recreated her stage role of Lady Teazle in "The School for Scandal" for PBS' "Theater in America" in 1975. Moving to NYC, she found work with the New York Shakespeare Festival in "The Comedy of Errors" in Central Park and in "The Threepenny Opera" on Broadway.

Inevitable Hollywood beckoned and Brown was cast in several acclaimed TV productions ranging from the NBC miniseries "Captains and the Kings" (1976) to the award-winning "Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years" (ABC, 1977). She has continued to offer incisive and distinguished performances in the medium. In the 1983 NBC miniseries "Kennedy", Brown was applause for her sympathetic portrayal of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. She was the at first unsuspecting mother of a murderous child in the remake of "The Bad Seed" (ABC, 1985) and played the first female general who runs for the US Presidency in "Majority Rule" (Lifetime, 1992). While her finest TV role remains the independent Molly Dodd, Brown also excelled at tightly-wound, often wealthy matriarchs as in "A Season in Purgatory" (CBS, 1996) and "The Ultimate Lie" (NBC, 1996). She co-hosted (with Toukie Smith) the Lifetime talk show "Talk It Over" (1995) and briefly returned to series TV as a no-nonsense US attorney in the short-lived "Feds" (CBS, 1997).

Brown debuted in features in "The Choirboys" (1977) but came into her own as a leading lady opposite William Hurt in "Altered States" (1980), although her subsequent appearances have been infrequent. (Brown often put her family before her career.) One of her best screen roles was in 1981's "Continental Divide", playing a take-charge naturalist romanced by a newspaper reporter (John Belushi). David Hare wrote the leading role of Lillian Hempel, an expatriate American doctor living in London who begins a romance with a mysterious man, in "Strapless" (1989) for her. (He also penned the stage play "The Secret Rapture" for her as well). More recently, Brown returned to Broadway as star of Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" (1995) and as Frau Schneider in "Cabaret" (1998-99) before returning to features in a key supporting role in "The Astronaut's Wife" (1999)