Michelle Stafford, who was born on September 4, 1965 in Chicago, Illinois, is a two time Emmy Award winning actress who is best known for her portrayal of Phyllis Summers Newman on CBS' The Young and the Restless. She started out as a model, touring to places such as Japan, France and Italy, where she lived for a year, consequently learning how to speak Italian. She then shifted to acting, moving back to the United States to launch her acting career. There, she enrolled in acting classes and got herself an agent who got her cast on a soap opera entitled Tribes. Later, she appeared in several commercials and had guest appearances on TV shows. Her television credits include Renegade, Pacific Palisades, Diagnosis Murder, JAG,
Frasier , Judging Amy and
Charmed . In 2001, Stafford was cast for the soap opera The Young and the Restless, where she played Phyllis Summers Abbott. She won Outstanding Supporting Actress Daytime Emmy Award in 1997 and the Outstanding Lead Actress Daytime Emmy Award in 2004 for this role.
Phyllis Summers Abbott is portrayed by Michelle Stafford in the soap opera The Young and the Restless. Daughter of George Summers and Lydia Callahan Summers, Phyllis is the co-founder of NVP Retreats. She is married to Nicholas Newman and the mother of Daniel Romalotti and a baby girl named Summer. Before her marriage with Nicholas, she was involved with a number of men such as Danny Romalotti, who was a rock star at the time they met. She was an obsessed stalker who was pregnant at the time of his tour, so she drugged him and made him believe that he was the father of her baby. He later divorced his wife and married Phyllis, until he discovered that the baby wasn't his. The two battled for the custody of Nicholas, and Danny won.
(Photo courtesy of CBS.com)