Elizabeth Hendon MacRae (February 22, 1936 – May 27, 2024) was an American actress who performed in dozens of television series and in nine feature films, working predominantly in productions released between 1958 and the late 1980s.

[2][3] Her father, an attorney, moved the family before April 1940 to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he opened a law practice and later served as a superior court judge.

[5] Following her graduation from Holton-Arms, MacRae decided to pursue an acting career and in 1956 traveled to Atlanta, Georgia to audition for a part in director Otto Preminger's production Saint Joan.

[6] She failed to be cast in the film, but in a 1959 newspaper interview with syndicated Hollywood columnist Joe Hyams, MacRae credited Preminger for encouraging her not to abandon her career plans and instead to seek intensive, professional performance training.

[6] Heeding Preminger's advice, MacRae in October 1956 moved to New York City, where for two years she studied with Uta Hagen at the Herbert Berghof Studio and gained stage experience playing assorted characters in off-Broadway and summer-stock productions.

She started making money after doing some portraits for a local church bazaar, which led to overwhelming demand from people who "commissioned me to draw their children", supporting herself through her acting classes and the early days of her career.

Kathryn Grant was chosen for that part by Preminger; but, as noted by newspaper columnist Earl Wilson, MacRae soon was cast in her first television role, playing a witness in the courtroom series The Verdict Is Yours.

[6][10] Over the next several years, MacRae began to perform increasingly in more substantive, credited roles in televised dramas and sitcoms, ultimately appearing in a wide variety of popular weekly series, most of which are productions from the 1960s and 1970s.

Some of the programs from that period include 77 Sunset Strip; Hawaiian Eye; Surfside 6; Harrigan and Son; Burke's Law; Dr. Kildare; The Andy Griffith Show; The Untouchables; Death Valley Days; Rawhide; General Hospital; Gunsmoke (in a short recurring role as “April”); The Fugitive; Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.

Her earliest credited screen role is in the comedy Love in a Goldfish Bowl, released by Paramount Pictures in the summer of 1961 and co-stars Tommy Sands and Fabian.

[14] MacRae later that year performed as a supporting character in Everything's Ducky, a screenplay about a talking duck produced by Columbia Pictures and starring Mickey Rooney.

Film stills of her scenes with Hackman are featured prominently in 1974 previews and in other contemporary coverage of the drama by The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other major American newspapers.

These items are preserved on campus in the Southern Historical Collection at the Louis Round Wilson Library and include letters, scrapbooks with newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, audio and videotapes, as well as her working scripts from various films, television series, and stage productions in which she performed.