Katherine Burton is a British/Swiss actress, the daughter of Welsh actors Richard Burton and Sybil Christopher. On television, Burton received critical acclaim as Ellis Grey in the Shonda Rhimes drama series Grey's Anatomy, and as Vice President Sally Langston on Scandal. She has been nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards and three Tony Awards. Early life Burton was born in Geneva, Switzerland, the daughter of Welsh parents, producer Sybil Burton (née Williams) and actor Richard Burton. She was thus the stepdaughter of Elizabeth Taylor and of Sybil's second husband Jordan Christopher, both actors. Burton earned a bachelor's degree in Russian Studies and European History from Brown University in 1979, where she was on the board of Production Workshop, one of the university's student theater groups, and a master's degree from Yale School of Drama in 1982. Brown awarded Burton an honorary doctorate in 2007. Career Stage work Burton's first notable role on Broadway was in a 1982 production of the Noël Coward play Present Laughter directed by George C. Scott. The following year, she appeared in the Broadway musical Doonesbury, playing J.J. Burton also appeared as Alice in Eva Le Gallienne's Alice in Wonderland on Broadway, produced by The Mirror Theater Ltd's Sabra Jones. Several key roles followed, including roles in Wendy Wasserstein's An American Daughter and Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane. In 2002, she received Tony Award nominations in separate performance categories: Best Actress in a Play, for her portrayal of the title role in Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, and Best Featured Actress in a Play for her portrayals of Pinhead/Mrs. Kendal in the revival of The Elephant Man. As of May 2019, she is one of only six actors, including Amanda Plummer, Dana Ivey, Jan Maxwell, Mark Rylance, and Jeremy Pope, to be nominated for Tony awards in two different categories in the same year. In 2006, Burton starred in the Off-Broadway production of The Water's Edge opposite Tony Goldwyn. That year, she again received a Tony nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Play for her role in W. Somerset Maugham's The Constant Wife. In 2007, she played Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard at Boston's Huntington Theatre. On December 21, 2007, she joined the cast of the Broadway musical Spring Awakening in the role of the Adult Women when she replaced actress Christine Estabrook. Kristine Nielsen replaced her on March 2, 2008, for a short