Madeleine Sherwood
Date of Birth
Madeleine Sherwood was an actress best known for her role as Reverend Mother Superior Lydia Placido on the comedy series The Flying Nun, which aired on ABC from 1967 to 1970. The show followed a community of nuns at a convent in Puerto Rico, whose habits included a starched cornette headpiece that allowed one of the nuns, Sister Bertrille (played by Sally Field), to fly.
Sherwood also appeared on the television series Guiding Light, Danger, Studio One in Hollywood, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Naked City, The Fugitive, Ben Casey, The Jackie Gleason Show, One Life to Live, Bonanza, Columbo, As the World Turns, Cagney & Lacey and Dynasty.
In addition, she had roles in the films Sweet Bird of Youth, starring Paul Newman and Geraldine Page; Otto Preminger's Hurry Sundown, with Michael Caine and Jane Fonda; Pendulum, with George Peppard and Jean Seberg; The Changling, starring George C. Scott; and An Unremarkable Life, with Patricia Neal and Shelley Winters.
Madeleine Sherwood was an actress best known for her role as Reverend Mother Superior Lydia Placido on the comedy series The Flying Nun, which aired on ABC from 1967 to 1970. The show followed a community of nuns at a convent in Puerto Rico, whose habits included a starched cornette headpiece that allowed one of the nuns, Sister Bertrille (played by Sally Field), to fly.
Sherwood also appeared on the television series Guiding Light, Danger, Studio One in Hollywood, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Naked City, The Fugitive, Ben Casey, The Jackie Gleason Show, One Life to Live, Bonanza, Columbo, As the World Turns, Cagney & Lacey and Dynasty.
In addition, she had roles in the films Sweet Bird of Youth, starring Paul Newman and Geraldine Page; Otto Preminger's Hurry Sundown, with Michael Caine and Jane Fonda; Pendulum, with George Peppard and Jean Seberg; The Changling, starring George C. Scott; and An Unremarkable Life, with Patricia Neal and Shelley Winters.
Sherwood got her start as a performer by studying under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York, then making her Broadway debut in 1952 in Horton Foote's The Chase. A year later, she performed in Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
She also appeared in both the stage and film productions of the Tennessee Williams classics Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (directed by Elia Kazan) and Sweet Bird of Youth. Her other Broadway credits include Camelot, Williams' The Night of the Iguana (where she filled in for Bette Davis), Do I Hear a Waltz?, Inadmissible Evidence and Edward Albee's All Over.
Sherwood died April 23, 2016, in Lac Cornu, Quebec, Canada. She was 93.
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