Susan Blakely

Susan Blakely is an American actress best known for her starring turn in Rich Man, Poor Man, the 1976 ABC miniseries. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, she was the child of an Army colonel and studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, where her teachers included Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner, after attending the University of Texas at El Paso. She signed with the Ford Modeling Agency in 1967, appearing in hundreds of commercials. Reaching Hollywood in the early 1970s, she took supporting parts before her first major role, Patty Simmons in The Towering Inferno (1974). Leads in Report to the Commissioner (1975) and Capone (1975) followed, and Rich Man, Poor Man won her a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination, with a second Emmy nomination for the sequel. Her portrayal of Frances Farmer in Will There Really Be a Morning? earned her a Golden Globe nomination, and she played Eva Braun in The Bunker (1981).