Life and career

Widdoes was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the daughter of Bernice (née Delapo) and Eugene Widdoes. Widdoes moved to Manhattan to pursue stage work and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris under a Fulbright scholarship. From 1964 to 1972 she was married to well-known actor Richard Jordan, with whom she had her daughter Nina. She is currently married with one child and one grandchild.

Television

Although returning frequently to New York theatre, Widdoes is probably most known for her work in soap operas. She was an original cast member of Young Doctor Malone, playing Jill Malone (1958-59). She played lower middle class matriarch Rose Perrini on Another World (1978-80) and appeared for a short time on Ryan's Hope (1983) as the vindictive villainess Una McCurtain who went crazy as a result of her family's failure to get revenge on Maeve Ryan as part of an old family feud.

In 1985, she began her best-known role, on As the World Turns as Emma Snyder, the matriarch of a new core family based on the real family of then-head writer Douglas Marland. She was prominently featured during the show's 50th anniversary program in April 2006 and continued to make regular appearances until the series finale year although she was noticeably absent during the last few months.

She was menaced in the Dissolve to Black (1961) episode of Roald Dahl's Way Out (1961) and appeared in The Invaders TV series as Ellen Woods (1967), supposedly deranged after seeing extraterrestrials in a barn near her town. She had a featured role in the HBO series Oz (1997, 2000).

Films

Her film credits include The Group (1966), Petulia (1968), Sidney Lumet's The Sea Gull (1968), The Mephisto Waltz (1971), James Ivory's Savages (1972), I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (1982) and Courage Under Fire (1996).

Theater

She received a 1973 Tony Award nomination (Best Actress in a Play) for her performance as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, set at the end of the Spanish-American War (1898), for the New York Shakespeare Festival. The production transferred from the open-air Delacorte Theater in Central Park to Broadway and was preserved for television. She played other roles for the Festival, including Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 2002, she received the Lucille Lortel Award (Featured Actress) for her work in the play Franny's Way Off-Broadway.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]