Kelly Bishop

Kelly Bishop is best known for playing the character Baby’s mother in “Dirty Dancing” and Emily Gilmore on “Gilmore Girls.” She won a Tony Award for best featured actress in a musical for her role as Sheila in “A Chorus Line.”

A former ballet dancer, Bishop trained at the American Ballet Theatre School and the San Jose Ballet School. At 18, she danced in a year-round company at Radio City Music Hall and performed in Las Vegas, summer stock and on television before making her Broadway debut in “Golden Rainbow” in 1967. Her Broadway credits include Neil Simon’s “Proposals,” “Six Degrees of Separation,” “The Last Days of Ballyhoo,” “Bus Stop,” “Precious Sons” and “Becky Shaw,” along with numerous off-Broadway and regional theater appearances.

Her film work began with Paul Mazursky’s “An Unmarried Woman” in 1978. She gained fame in “Dirty Dancing” in 1986 and appeared in “Private Parts,” “Wonder Boys,” “Queens Logic,” “Cafe Society,” “Miami Rhapsody” and “Blue Moon.”

On television, she starred in “Gilmore Girls” and appeared in “The Thorns,” “My Wildest Dreams,” “Murphy Brown,” “Law & Order,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Army Wives,” “Mercy” and “The Good Wife.” In 2012, she played Fanny Flowers on Amy Sherman-Palladino’s “Bunheads.”

Bishop enjoys Pilates, aerobics, hiking and gardening. She was married to TV talk show host Lee Leonard.