Dixie Carter

Dixie Virginia Carter was born and raised in McLemoresville, Tennessee. Upon her graduation from Southwestern University in Memphis, Miss Carter made her New York debut as Perdita in A Winter's Tale with the New York Shakespeare Festival. Other theatrical credits include Kiss Me Kate, Carousel, Oklahoma!, Brigadoon, A Little Night Music, Mame, Pal Joey, The Student Prince, The New Moon, Babes in Arms, John Ford Noonan's two-character play A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking, and The King and I at the FrontStreet Theater in New York. She created the roles of Dixie Avalon in Taken in Marriage and Liz Conlon in Buried Inside Extra in New York and at the Royal Court Theater in London. She also appeared in productions with Music Theater of Lincoln Center and in revues at Upstairs at the Downstairs. In 1993, she performed the role of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire in Memphis.

Dixie's performance as Calamity Jane in Fathers and Sons won her a Drama Desk nomination. She won a Theatre World Award for her portrayal of Belle Starr in Jesse and the Bandit Queen, co-starred on Broadway in the 1974 musical Sextet, and starred as Melba in the 1976 Broadway revival of Pal Joey. Dixie also appeared regularly on the TV soap opera The Edge of Night while in New York doing theater.

Since moving to California, Miss Carter has made numerous guest appearances on television series. She also appeared as a regular on the television series Diff'rent Strokes, On Our Own, Out of the Blue, and Filthy Rich and co-starred in the television movies Ohms, The Killing of Randy Webster, Gone in the Night, and Judith Krantz's Dazzle.

In the years since her popular CBS sitcom ended, the woman best known for her role as feisty Julia Sugarbaker has starred on Broadway in Terrence McNally's award-winning Master Class, appeared in two yoga videos, and has recorded two music CDs, Come a Little Closerand Dixie Carter Sings John Wallowitch Live at the Cafe Carlyle. Miss Carter's book Trying to Get to Heaven is published by Simon & Schuster in both hardcover and paperback. For the past several years, she has appeared each spring in a cabaret act at the Cafe Carlyle in Manhattan. Between tunes, Carter tells heartwarming, hilarious tales about her girlhood in Tennessee and life with her husband and former co-star Hal Holbrook, with whom she still enjoys a passionate love affair.

Dixie met her husband Hal Holbrook --- who also played the recurring character of Julia's beau Reese on Designing Women --- while filming the CBS-TV movie The Killing of Randy Webster. They reside in L.A. with her father and their two dogs. Miss Carter's daughters Ginna and Mary Dixie Carter, both graduates of Harvard College, are pursuing careers in theater and music. Carter says she hopes some day to find a television series as well written as Designing Women to star in alongside her actress daughters. She is also shopping for a stage play in which she and her husband can work together.

Carter's latest series was the CBS series Family Law, where she played Randi King, an outrageous, cut-throat divorce attorney who suffered her own marital headaches and drew on that angst to jumpstart her career. In addition, she appeared in the recurring role of Peaches on CBS's Ladies Man.

In the 2003 stage review of Paper Doll, Dixie stars as Jacqueline Susann, the flamboyant 1960s icon of the trash novel profession, best known for her 1966 novel, Valley of the Dolls.

For more information on Dixie, visit her Official Website at:
The Cabaret: dixiecarter.com