Doris Roberts life and biography

Doris Roberts is an American character actress of film, stage and television. She has received five Emmy Awards. With a seven-decade career, she is most widely known for playing Marie Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond from 1996-2005.

Roberts was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Larry and Ann Meltzer. Her father deserted the family when Roberts was a child, and her mother raised Doris Jewish with the help of her Russian-born parents in The Bronx, New York. Her stepfather was Chester H. Roberts.

In 1999, Doris Roberts achieved "overnight" stardom in the role of Marie Barone in the series Everybody Loves Raymond, going from working actress -- which she'd been for more than 40 years to being an instantly recognized performer. It was an improbable climb to the top rank of popular culture stardom. Roberts was born in St. Louis, MO, in 1929, to a family that was soon shattered when the father abandoned them. She had a difficult but loving childhood as her mother sought to provide for both of them by herself, and eventually Roberts gravitated toward the idea of an acting career. To do this, she had to work at any jobs that she could find, including clerk typist, to afford the lessons that she needed from teachers that included Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner.

She made her first television appearance in the early '50s, in a Studio_One production of Jane Eyre, and made the usual rounds between theater and television. Her theatrical debut came on the a stage at New York's City Center in 1955, and she was Shirley Booth's understudy in the theatrical version of the comedy +Desk Set. She distinguished herself in the role of Mommy in the original production of Edward Albee's +The American Dream, and since the early '60s, had carved a niche for herself in maternal and neighborly roles, on both stage and screen. Following her screen debut in Jack_Garfein's New York-filmed drama Something Wild (1961), she tended more toward comedy (albeit often black comedy), with performances in Jack_Smight's No Way to Treat a Lady, where she played the skeptical onlooker whose questions and low-key intervention save the life of a would-be victim; Leonard Kastle's The Honeymoon Killers (1970), in which she played the roommate of the nurse-turned-murderer played by Shirley Stoler; and Alan Arkin's Little Murders (1971), where she played Elliott Gould's mother.

Filmography:

Play the Game (2009)
Aliens in the Attic (2009)
Mrs Miracle (2009)
Debbie Macomber's Mrs. Miracle (2009)
Another Harvest Moon (2009)
Grey's Anatomy (2011)
Hot In Cleveland (2011)
Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension (2011)

Emmy Awards:

1999 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series - Everybody Loves Raymond
2000 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series - Everybody Loves Raymond
2004 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series - Everybody Loves Raymond

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