Margaret Julia "Marlo" Thomas (born November 21, 1937[1]) is an American actress, producer, author, and social activist.

She also received a Grammy Award for her children's album Marlo Thomas and Friends: Thanks & Giving All Year Long.

[7] Thomas attended Marymount High School and graduated from the University of Southern California with a teaching degree: "I wanted a piece of paper that said I was qualified to do something in the world".

Her big break came in 1965 when she was cast by Mike Nichols in the London production of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, co-starring Daniel Massey, Kurt Kasznar, and Mildred Natwick.

Thomas and her father, Danny, were cast as Laurie and Ed Dubro in a 1961 episode, "Honor Bright", of CBS' Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre.

With their encouragement, Thomas came up with her own idea for a show about a young woman who leaves home, moves to New York City, and struggles to become an actress.

Both ABC and the show's sponsor, Clairol, wanted the series finale to be a wedding between the two central characters, but Thomas rebuffed them, saying that she felt it was the wrong message to send to her female audience, because it would give the impression that the only happy ending is marriage.

[9]After That Girl, eager to expand her horizons, Thomas attended the Actors Studio,[10] where she studied with Lee Strasberg until his death in 1982, and subsequently with his disciple Sandra Seacat.

She helped the George McGovern presidential campaign in October 1972 at Star-Spangled Women for McGovern–Shriver, reciting a parody of Erich Segal's Love Story for 19,000 people at Madison Square Garden.

She has made guest appearances on several television series, including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (as Judge Mary Conway Clark, a mentor of ADA Casey Novak), Ballers, The New Normal, Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later.

However, Thomas's first appearance on Friends was in Season 2 when her character goes looking for her daughter, who had run off to Manhattan after ditching her fiancé, Barry, at the altar.

[19] Thomas appeared in films such as Jenny (1970), Thieves (1977), In The Spirit (1990), The Real Blonde (1997), Starstruck (1998), Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999), Playing Mona Lisa (2000), LOL (2012) with Demi Moore and Miley Cyrus, and Cardboard Boxer (2014).

Also off-Broadway, she appeared opposite Greg Mullavey in the 2015 New York debut of Joe DiPietro's play Clever Little Lies at the Westside Theatre.

[24] On November 20, 2014, the Marlo Thomas Center for Global Education and Collaboration was opened as part of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

On November 24, 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Thomas the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony.

[27] They were married on May 21, 1980, and Donahue moved from Chicago to New York City with some of his sons and his daughter to live with Thomas and to produce his talk show there.

Concerning her relationship with her stepchildren, Thomas told AARP Magazine in May 2011: From the very first day, I decided that I was not going to try to be a 'mother' to Phil's children in the traditional sense—they already had a mom—but, instead, to be their friend.