Julie K. White (born June 4, 1961) is an American actress. She won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance in The Little Dog Laughed in 2007. She has also received three other Tony Award nominations for her performances in Airline Highway in 2013, Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus in 2019 and POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive in 2022. She played Sam Witwicky's mother Judy in the first three films of the Transformers film series (2007–2011).
She is also known for her television roles, including Nadine Swoboda in Chuck Lorre created ABC sitcom Grace Under Fire (1993–1997) as well as Ms. Preecher in American Horror Story (2023–2024). Other notable appearances on television include guest roles on Six Feet Under (2001–2002), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2003-2007), Desperate Housewives (2006), Nurse Jackie (2014) and The Good Wife (2015). She has also appeared in such films as Michael Clayton (2007), Lincoln (2012) and A Very Murray Christmas (2015).
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Personal life
White was born in the Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego, California, the daughter of Sue Jane (née Terry), a therapist, and Edwin White, a dentist. White and her family moved to Austin, Texas, to take up ranching when she was three years old. She started acting in local plays and became a semi-professional at 16. While she was playing the lead role in the musical The Baker's Wife, the show's authors encouraged her to take her talent to New York City.
After graduating from high school, she attended Southwest Texas State University (now known as Texas State University) and then attended Fordham University as an English major, although she did not graduate. White married Carl Pandel in 1984; they divorced in 1990.
Career
White has been a prolific stage actress, getting her start in regional theatre. Some of her regional theater credits include On the Verge at the Huntington Theatre Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 1985–1986, Largo desolato at the Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, 1990–1991, Marvin's Room at Seattle Repertory Theatre in January 1992, Absurd Person Singular in 1993 at the Long Wharf Theatre, Money and Friends by David Williamson at the UCLA James A. Doolittle Theatre, Hollywood, California, presented by the Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson in January to March 1993.
White made her Off-Broadway debut in Lucky Stiff in 1988 at Playwrights Horizons. She appeared in Just Say No (1988) and in the Off-Broadway WPA Theatre production of Early One Evening At the Rainbow Bar and Grille (1989) by Bruce Graham. She appeared in The Stick Wife by Darrah Cloud produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club at Stage II in 1991.
She appeared in Michael John LaChiusa's Over Texas, presented as part of the Ensemble Studio Theater's Marathon in 1991.
She appeared at the Off-Broadway Second Stage production of the Theresa Rebeck play Spike Heels with Kevin Bacon and Tony Goldwyn in 1992. Frank Rich wrote: "Julie White makes a far more vivid impression. Rail-thin but with a broad face and features, this actress has an off-center style and piquant wit that make her a natural for high comedy of this or any other period." White appeared in a one-woman show, Theresa Rebeck's Bad Dates, written especially for her. The play premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in June 2003.
On Broadway, White appeared in Wendy Wasserstein's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Heidi Chronicles, as a replacement. She also appeared in the made-for-television movie of The Heidi Chronicles, which aired in 1995.
In 2006, she appeared Off-Broadway in The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane, playing Diane, a screen agent, who, as one critic put it, is "a Mephistopheles in Manolos". The show transferred to Broadway in October 2006 with a new cast, including former Grace Under Fire costar Tom Everett Scott. She won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for her performance.
Filmography
Film
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Television
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