Constance Towers
Encyclopedia
Early life
Towers was born in Whitefish, MontanaWhitefish, Montana
Whitefish is a city in Flathead County, Montana, United States. The population was 5,032 at the 2000 census. It is home to a ski resort on Big Mountain called Whitefish Mountain Resort. Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer hails from Whitefish....
, the daughter of Ardath L. (née
Married and maiden names
A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....
Reynolds) and Harry J. Towers. According to her official Web site, a contract from Paramount Pictures was offered to her at age 11 but was declined. Towers later attended the Juilliard School of Music and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Career
Towers has had an extensive career on both the stage and screen. She portrayed the title role in the short-lived 1965 stage production of the musical AnyaAnya (musical)
Anya is a musical with a book by George Abbott and Guy Bolton and music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest. As they had done with Song of Norway and Kismet , Wright and Forrest developed the musical score using themes written by a classical composer, in this case Sergei...
. She also played Anna opposite Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner was a Russian-born actor of stage and film. He was best known for his portrayal of Mongkut, king of Siam, in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor for the film version; he also played the role more than 4,500 times on...
in The King and I
The King and I
The King and I is a stage musical, the fifth by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The work is based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and derives from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, who became governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in...
on Broadway in the 1970s. She appeared in a 1966 production of Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
at Lincoln Center.
In 1993, Towers guest-starred in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a science fiction television series set in the Star Trek universe...
episode "The Forsaken
The Forsaken (DS9 episode)
"The Forsaken" is the 17th episode of the science fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.-Overview:Dr. Bashir is assigned "babysitting" duty for four visiting ambassadors, O'Brien deals with an alien computer program downloaded from a probe, and Odo copes with a deeply infatuated...
." She has had guest roles on a number of popular television programs including Designing Women
Designing Women
Designing Women is an American television sitcom that centered on the working and personal lives of four Southern women and one man in an interior design firm in Atlanta, Georgia. It aired on the CBS television network from September 29, 1986 until May 24, 1993. The show was created by head writer...
, Frasier
Frasier
Frasier is an American sitcom that was broadcast on NBC for eleven seasons, from September 16, 1993, to May 13, 2004. The program was created and produced by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee in association with Grammnet and Paramount Network Television.A spin-off of Cheers, Frasier stars...
, Baywatch
Baywatch
Baywatch is an American action drama series about the Los Angeles County Lifeguards who patrol the beaches of Los Angeles County, California, starring David Hasselhoff. The show ran in its original title and format from 1989 to 1999, sans the 1990-1991 season, of which it was not in production...
and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from September 10, 1990 to May 20, 1996. The show stars Will Smith as a fictionalized version of himself, a street-smart teenager from West Philadelphia who is sent to move in with his aunt and uncle in their...
.
She also appeared in the film drama A Perfect Murder
A Perfect Murder
A Perfect Murder is a 1998 American thriller film directed by Andrew Davis and starring Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow and Viggo Mortensen. It is a modern remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 film, Dial M for Murder, though the characters' names are all changed, and over half the plot is completely...
, alongside Michael Douglas
Michael Douglas
Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...
and Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Kate Paltrow is an American actress and singer. She made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. After appearing in several films throughout the decade, Paltrow gained early notice for her work in films such as Se7en and Emma...
.
Earlier in her film career, Towers was known for playing tough girls. For example, she starred in Samuel Fuller
Samuel Fuller
Samuel Michael Fuller was an American screenwriter, novelist, and film director known for low-budget genre movies with controversial themes.-Personal life:...
's Shock Corridor
Shock Corridor
Shock Corridor is a 1963 film, directed and written by Samuel Fuller. The film tells the story of a journalist who gets himself committed to a mental hospital in order to track an unsolved murder.-Plot:...
as an exotic dancer and The Naked Kiss
The Naked Kiss
The Naked Kiss is a 1964 neo-noir film written and directed by Samuel Fuller, starring Constance Towers as Kelly, Anthony Eisley as Captain Griff and Michael Dante as J.L. Grant.-Plot:...
as a prostitute. She also starred in two John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
western films, The Horse Soldiers
The Horse Soldiers
The Horse Soldiers is a 1959 DeLuxe Color war film, set in the American Civil War, directed by John Ford, starring John Wayne, William Holden and Constance Towers...
and Sergeant Rutledge
Sergeant Rutledge
Sergeant Rutledge is a 1960 Western and military courtroom drama starring Woody Strode and Jeffrey Hunter. It was directed by John Ford and shot on location in Monument Valley, Utah....
, as well as in the musical-comedy Bring Your Smile Along
Bring Your Smile Along
Bring Your Smile Along is a 1955 Technicolor comedy film by Blake Edwards. It was Edwards' directorial debut and the motion picture debut of Constance Towers. Edwards wrote the script for this Frankie Laine musical with his mentor, director Richard Quine...
for director Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures...
.
Her many other TV roles have included series such as State Trooper
State Trooper (TV series)
State Trooper is a half-hour television crime drama set in the 1950s American West, starring Rod Cameron as Rod Blake, an officer of the Nevada State Troopers. The series aired 104 episodes in syndication from September 25, 1956, to June 25, 1959...
, Hawaii Five-O
Hawaii Five-O
Hawaii Five-O is an American police procedural drama series produced by CBS Productions and Leonard Freeman. Set in Hawaii, the show originally aired for twelve seasons from 1968 to 1980, and continues in reruns. The show featured a fictional state police unit run by Detective Steve McGarrett,...
, The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files is an American television drama series which aired on the NBC network between September 13, 1974 and January 10, 1980. It has remained in regular syndication to the present day. The show stars James Garner as Los Angeles-based private investigator Jim Rockford and features Noah...
and L.A. Law
L.A. Law
L.A. Law is a US television legal drama that ran on NBC from September 15, 1986 to May 19, 1994. L.A. Law reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early 1990s and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot topic issues such as abortion, racism, gay rights,...
; in Love is a Many Splendored Thing playing Marion Hiller, the wheelchair
Wheelchair
A wheelchair is a chair with wheels, designed to be a replacement for walking. The device comes in variations where it is propelled by motors or by the seated occupant turning the rear wheels by hand. Often there are handles behind the seat for someone else to do the pushing...
-bound wife of Dr. Sanford Hiller; in Capitol
Capitol (TV series)
Capitol is an American soap opera which aired on CBS from March 29, 1982 to March 20, 1987 for 1,270 episodes. As its name suggests, the storyline usually revolved around the political intrigues of people whose lives intertwined in Washington D.C....
(as one of the show's matriarchs, kindly Clarissa McCandless); as Madame Julianna Deschanel on Sunset Beach
Sunset Beach (TV series)
Sunset Beach was an American television soap opera, first broadcast in the United States on NBC on January 6, 1997, and last airing on December 31, 1999. The show followed the loves and lives of the people living in a fictional coastal city named Sunset Beach, on the coast of California...
, as villainess Helena Cassadine
Helena Cassadine
Helena Cassadine is a fictional character on the American soap opera General Hospital, famously originated by film actress Elizabeth Taylor in November 1981...
on General Hospital
General Hospital
General Hospital is an American daytime television drama that is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running American soap opera currently in production and the third longest running drama in television in American history after Guiding Light and As the World Turns....
, and as Audry Parker on The 4400
The 4400
The 4400 is a science fiction TV series produced by CBS Paramount Network Television in association with Sky Television, Renegade 83, and American Zoetrope for USA Network. The show was created and written by Scott Peters and René Echevarria, and it stars Joel Gretsch and Jacqueline McKenzie...
. She also played the part of Clarice in "Frasier", Season 2, episode 1, the older woman/piano teacher who first showed young Frasier "the ways of love".