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Today's Featured Biography

Joan Van Ark Marshall

Tony nominated Joan van Ark is perhaps best known for her role as Valene Ewing on Dallas and Knots Landing for 15 seasons during which she earned six nominations and won two Soap Opera Digest Awards for Best Actress. More recently, she appeared for a season on CBS’s The Young and the Restless creating the role of Gloria Fisher. Prior to her role on Knots Landing, van Ark was also a series regular on the TV sitcoms, Temperatures Rising and We’ve Got Each Other. As a director, she was nominated for the prestigious Humanitas Award for an ABC Afterschool Special in which she also co-starred.

Her recent film efforts include two independent features, Net Games and Diamond Zero with Tippi Hedron, Held for Ransom with Dennis Hopper and Up Michigan. Her television movie credits include: Tornado Watch, When the Darkman Calls, Moment of Truth: A Mother’s Deception, In the Shadows: Someone’s Watching (actor/producer), Menu for Murder, Always Remember I Love You, My First Love and Shakedown on the Sunset Strip. She also starred as the Vice President of the United States in the FOX Family telefilm Loyal Opposition and television episodes of Twice in a Lifetime and the FX comedy Son of the Beach. In animation, she was the voice of Amelia on CBS-TV’s Saturday morning cartoon show Santo Bugito and was the title character in Spider Woman for ABC. In 2009, Joan guest starred on NBC's "My Name is Earl" and "Nip/Tuck" on FX with another “Nip/Tuck” appearance in 2010.

She earned the Tony nomination for her Broadway role in The School for Wives and won Broadway’s Theater World Award for The Rules of the Game. She recently appeared at the Kennedy Center in the world première of Tennessee Williams’ Five by Tenn as part of the Center’s Williams celebration with Sally Fields, Patricia Clarkson and Kathleen Chalfant. She co-starred in the Feydeau farce Private Fittings at the La Jolla Playhouse, the New York theatre production of The Exonerated as well as the West Coast production of the off Broadway hit Vagina Monologues by award-winning playwright Eve Ensler. Her most recent theater appearance was Tennessee Williams’ A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur at Hartford Stage directed by Michael Wilson. She also appeared off-Broadway in Love Letters and co-starred in the New York production of Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Three Tall Women. Her Los Angeles theater credits include Cyrano de Bergerac, playing Roxanne opposite Richard Chamberlain’s Cyrano, Ring Around the Moon with Michael York, Chemin de Fer, Heartbreak House and As You Like It, for which she won a Los Angeles Drama Critics Award. She starred as Lady Macbeth in the Grove Shakespeare Festival’s production of Macbeth. She also appeared at The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. starring as Camille in Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real directed by Michael Kahn. Van Ark has also appeared in the Williamstown Theatre Festival productions of Night of the Iguana, The Legend of Oedipus as Jocasta and the Festival’s 40th Anniversary production of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music as Desiree.

Van Ark was the second youngest student to attend the Yale School of Drama on scholarship; her mentor and Knots Landing co-star, Julie Harris, was the first. Van Ark got her professional start at Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater in Moliere’s The Miser, opposite Hume Cronyn and Zoe Caldwell, followed by Death of a Salesman at the same venue with both Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. After a season at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., she was cast in the national touring company of Barefoot in the Park, directed by Mike Nichols and recreated the role in the critically acclaimed London company and later on Broadway.

Ms. Van Ark also directed a short documentary on homelessness and domestic violence for the Directors Guild of America, which was nominated for an Emmy. Lifetime Television featured her career on its one hour retrospective, Intimate Portrait.
                

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