Shelley Plimpton Carradine (born February 27, 1947) is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 former actress and Broadway

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 performer.

Plimpton was born in Roseburg

Roseburg, Oregon

Roseburg is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is the county seat of Douglas County. The population was 21,181 at the 2010 census.-History:...

, Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

, to a father who ran an auto parts store. She is a "very distant" cousin of writer George Plimpton

George Plimpton

George Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, editor, and actor. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review.-Early life:...

. She moved to New York with her researcher mother when she was 14, after her father died. Her acting career spanned from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s. She created the role of "Crissy" in the original 1967 Off-Broadway production of Hair

Hair (musical)

Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...

, and continued the role as a member of the original Broadway cast when the production moved to Broadway in 1968. In both productions, she sang the song "Frank Mills". Plimpton also appeared in the 1969 Robert Downey, Sr. film Putney Swope

Putney Swope

Putney Swope, a 1969 film written and directed by Robert Downey Sr. and starring Arnold Johnson as Swope, is a comedy satirizing the advertising world, the portrayal of race in Hollywood films, the white power structure, and nature of corporate corruption....

 as one half of an interracial college couple ("It started last weekend at the Yale-Howard game") in a satire of a pimple cream TV spot. She sings a duet, in which she concludes: "My man uses Face Off / He's really out of sight, and so are his pimples."

Plimpton is the mother of actress Martha Plimpton

Martha Plimpton

Martha Campbell Plimpton is an American actress and singer and former model. Plimpton is a screen, stage and television actress. She first appeared as Jonsy in the feature film River Rats before rising to prominence in the Richard Donner film The Goonies portraying the character Stef...

 (from a relationship with actor Keith Carradine

Keith Carradine

Keith Ian Carradine is an American actor who has had success on stage, film and television. In addition, he is a Golden Globe and Oscar winning songwriter. As a member of the Carradine family, he is part of an acting "dynasty" that began with his father, John Carradine.-Early life:Keith...

) and a former wife of theatre director Daniel Sullivan (who worked as an assistant director on Hair.)

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