For her role as Emily Hartley on the CBS sitcom The Bob Newhart Show (1972–1978) she received two nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.

[5][6] She graduated from Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts and attended Syracuse University for one semester, then transferred to Finch College.

The following year, she performed in the debut of The Cold Wind and the Warm by S. N. Behrman at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, directed by Harold Clurman and produced by Robert Whitehead.

During the run of The Cold Wind and the Warm, she spent mornings taking striptease lessons from Jerome Robbins for the role in Gypsy.

[1] Her early screen credits include The Geisha Boy (1958), Rome Adventure (1962), Fate Is the Hunter (1964), and Youngblood Hawke (1962), but she was best known at that time for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's suspense film The Birds (1963).

Pleshette's first screen role was in the episode "Night Rescue" (December 5, 1957) of the CBS adventure/drama television series Harbormaster, starring Barry Sullivan and Paul Burke.

Other early television appearances include Playhouse 90, Decoy, Have Gun – Will Travel, One Step Beyond, Riverboat, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Tab Hunter Show, Channing, Ben Casey, Naked City, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, the pilot episode of The Wild Wild West, and Dr. Kildare, for which she was nominated for her first Emmy Award.

She guest-starred more than once as different characters in each of the following 1960s TV series: Route 66,[citation needed] The Fugitive, The Invaders,[21] The F.B.I., Columbo (Dead Weight) (1971) and The Name of the Game.

[24] On August 5, 1971,[25] TV producers saw her on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson[26][27][28][29] and noticed a certain chemistry between Suzanne and fellow guest Bob Newhart.

In 1990, Pleshette portrayed Manhattan hotelier Leona Helmsley in the television movie Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean, which garnered her nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film.

She had a starring role in Good Morning, Miami, as Mark Feuerstein's grandmother Claire Arnold in season one and played the mother of Katey Sagal's character in the ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter following John Ritter's death.

Pleshette provided the voices of Yubaba and Zeniba in the English dub of Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki's Academy Award-winning film Spirited Away and the voice of Zira in Disney's direct-to-video film The Lion King II: Simba's Pride in 1998 (replacing Kathleen Turner)[33] and sang the song "My Lullaby".

In her last role she appeared as the estranged mother of Megan Mullally's character Karen Walker in three episodes of the NBC sitcom Will & Grace.

He survived lung cancer, and later died of E. coli and was buried[46] in Hillside Memorial Park, Culver City, Los Angeles, California.

[citation needed] On August 11, 2006, Pleshette's agent Joel Dean announced that she was being treated for lung cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

She arrived at a Bob Newhart Show cast reunion in September 2007 in a wheelchair, which raised concern about her health, although she insisted that she was "cancer-free".

[1] She is buried close to her third husband, Tom Poston (who died the previous year), in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.