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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.

Female comics seemed to perceive Roberts' gifts as an actress especially well, as she got two of her better roles, in A_New_Leaf (1971) and Rabbit_Test (1978), from Elaine_May and Joan_Rivers, respectively. Although she began appearing in television in the 1950s, with appearances on Ben Casey, The_Mary_Tyler_Moore_Show, Baretta, All in the Family, The Streets of San Francisco, Rhoda, Soap, and Barney_Miller, Roberts didn't start to make a lasting impression in the medium -- which would become her vehicle for stardom -- until the 1970s. She was supposed to have a role in a proposed new series starring Mary_Tyler_Moore, but when that series failed to sell, she was cast in the role of Donna_Pescow's mother in the series Angie (1979), which got Roberts her first real notice by the public or the press. After that, the television appearances grew more frequent, and finally in 1983, she joined the cast of Remington Steele midway through the series' run, as Mildred Krebs, an IRS investigator-turned-secretary-turned-detective, working alongside Pierce_Brosnan and Stephanie_Zimbalist, and often stealing the show with her low-key comedic work. Roberts' first marriage ended in divorce, and her second, to novelist William Goyen, ended when he died in 1983 -- her son from her first marriage, Michael Cannata, has been her manager since the 1970s. It was a dozen years after Remington Steele, and some notable guest star appearances on shows like St._Elsewhere, that she landed the role of Marie on Everybody_Loves_Raymond. Since then, she has been a guest on talk shows and an acting celebrity, with a brace of Emmy nominations to her credit. Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

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