Award-winning American actress Stockard Channing was born on February 13, 1944 in New York City. She has been lauded and nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and she has won multiple Emmy Awards and a Tony award for her long-running career throughout television, stage and film. The daughter of a shipping magnate, she was raised in the Big Apple’s Upper East Side and attended both the Chapin School and the Madeira School. After taking up literature and history at Radcliffe College and graduating in 1965, she went on to pursue her acting career. One of her best-known roles is her performance as Betty Rizzo in the musical movie Grease.

Doctor Abigail ‘Abbey’ Bartlet is portrayed by Stockard Channing in the Emmy Award-winning political drama series The West Wing. She is a world-renowned physician specializing in thoracic surgery and internal medicine, as well as the wife of President Josiah Bartlet, and thus the First Lady of the United States. After graduating from Harvard Medical School, she served on the staff of the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and the Boston Mercy Hospital. Abbey is the mother of three young women: Ellie, Zoey, and Elizabeth. She also teaches as an adjunct professor of thoracic surgery at her alma mater.



(Photo courtesy of David Rose)