Kathleen Doyle "Kathy" Bates is an American actress and director.
The youngest of three daughters of Bertye Kathleen and Langdon Doyle Bates. Her great-great-grandfather was an immigrant from Ireland to New Orleans and served as President Andrew Jackson's doctor. She graduated from White Station High School, and later attended Southern Methodist University, where she majored in theatre, was a member of Alpha Delta Pi sorority, and graduated in 1969. She moved to New York City in 1970 to pursue an acting career.
Her Broadway appearances include Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July and the Robert Altman-directed Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean opposite Karen Black and Cher. She received a Tony Award nomination in 1983 for her stage role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play 'night, Mother opposite Anne Pitoniak.
Bates's first feature film was the 1971 Miloš Forman comedy Taking Off. Bates continued to appear in little-seen films and while guest-starring in television shows before landing the role of obsessed fan Annie Wilkes, who holds her favorite author captive, in the 1990 thriller Misery. Based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King, she received her first Academy Award nomination for that role, winning Best Actress.
In 1977, she made her soap opera debut as Phyllis on NBC's soap opera The Doctors. Bates was nominated Emmy Award seven times.
Starting in the 1990s, Bates forged a formidable career as a director. She has directed episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, NYPD Blue, Oz, Six Feet Under, and Everwood. Bates has also directed the TV movies Dash and Lilly and the self-starring Ambulance Girl.
She directed and co-starred in Have Mercy (2006) with Melanie Griffith. In 2008, she re-teamed with her Titanic co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road.
Bates received a Tony Award nomination for her 1983 performance in the Broadway production, 'Night, Mother. She won a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance in Primary Colors (1998), for which she also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Bates won a SAG for the 1996 TV Movie The Late Shift. At the 75th Academy Awards, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 2002 film, About Schmidt.
Bates was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2003, but she did not reveal her illness to the general public until 2009. She stated she has been "in total remission" for over 5 and a half years, as of January 2009.