- Born
- Birth nameGrace Zabriskie Caplinger
- Nickname
- Gracie
- Height5′ 4″ (1.63 m)
- "Amazing Grace" Zabriskie was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. She wrote her own original poetry, then performed at coffee shops and various artist hangouts in Atlanta. She was also a wonderful silk-screen printmaker. She moved to Hollywood and made her acting debut in Norma Rae (1979). She went on to appear in over 80 movies. She gave an acclaimed performance as Mrs. Ames in East of Eden (1981), the adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel. Grace appeared in the highly acclaimed and Oscar-nominated An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) and The Big Easy (1986), set in her beloved New Orleans. She worked with producer and director David Lynch, and was a series regular in the cult favorite Twin Peaks (1990) as Sarah Palmer, the part with which she is most often identified. She also appeared in Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990) the same year. She has played a wide variety of roles, and gave a terrific performance in the Oscar-nominated Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) and showed great character depth as the lonely and despondent widow in The Passion of Darkly Noon (1995).
Grace's more recent roles were in the zany Sparkler (1997) and in the big-name feature No Good Deed (2002), based on a short story by Dashiell Hammett. A woman of many talents, she is currently creating her own original paintings, unique sculptures and woodwork art that can be viewed in Los Angeles galleries.
Her visual arts, which include creating lamps or "sculptures with light" as she calls them, are available from the L.A.-based ArtHaus.
- IMDb mini biography by: April Nyree Dawn
- SpouseJohn Dunham MacEachron(May 1963 - ?) (1 child)
- ParentsRoger Thomas CaplingerMarion Grace Zabriskie
- Razor-sharp cheekbones
- Large emotive eyes
- Grew up in the French Quarter of New Orleans where her father started Lafitte's, a well-known café and bar on Bourbon Street, frequented by such prolific personalities as Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote.
- All four of her grandparents were teachers, and Grace herself taught at an academy for black teen dropouts for a time.
- Has two daughters. One, Marion Lane, is a painter who works often in collaboration with her mother. The two have hand crafted fine art boxes for ArtHaus, a Los Angeles gallery.
- One of four children of Roger Thomas Caplinger and Marion Grace (Zabriskie) Caplinger. Her mother had distant Polish ancestry.
- I do less waiting by the phone than anyone I know in the business. I don't wait for a job. I just go on to my own work. Some people are suspicious of others who have more than one talent. I've had poets tell me to my face that an actress can't be a poet.
- [Recollecting working on the 1981 film "Galaxy of Terror"] We all said during the making of it that it was a film about corridors and tentacles.
- [Talking about her experience filming "Galaxy of Terror" in 1981] Nobody walked in and nominated themselves cast asshole, as is often the case. Everybody got along pretty well.
- I am an actress. That means I must convey states of being, emotions. Why would I cut the muscles that allow me to frown? I figure that people do get old, and until everyone in the world has their face lifted, somebody's got to play the people who don't. I'm here.
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