Michele Lee is an American actress, singer, dancer, producer, and director. She is known for her role as Karen Fairgate MacKenzie on the prime-time soap opera Knots Landing (1979–1993), for which she was nominated for a 1982 Emmy Award and won the Soap Opera Digest Award for Best Actress in 1988, 1991, and 1992. She was the only performer to appear in all 344 episodes of the series. Lee began her career on Broadway in Vintage 60 (1960) and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961). She made her movie debut in the film version of the latter in 1967. Her other film appearances include the Disney film The Love Bug (1968), The Comic (1969), and Along Came Polly (2004). She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1974 for Seesaw and for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 2001 for The Tale of the Allergist's Wife. She also played the title role in the 1998 TV film Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story and Madame Morrible in the Broadway musical Wicked in 2015. Early life Lee was born Michele Lee Dusick in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Sylvia Helen (née Silverstein) and Jack Dusick, a motion picture make-up artist." Career Career beginnings Her television career began at age 19, on the December 26, 1961, episode of the CBS-TV sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. After she sang in the film version of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, she became known for her roles in the films The Comic, opposite Dick Van Dyke, and The Love Bug, opposite Dean Jones. The latter becoming the second-highest-grossing film of 1969 in the United States. That same year, she starred in a special television production of the Jerome Kern–Otto Harbach musical, Roberta, in which she sang "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", and also peaked at #52 on the Billboard Hot 100 with "L. David Sloane". After the birth of her son, she worked infrequently until accepting a role on Broadway in Seesaw, which netted her a Tony Award nomination in 1974. After her mother's death, she stopped working to spend time with her son. In 1974, Lee starred in the pilot episode for proposed CBS sitcom The Michele Lee Show. She played Michele Burton, a clerk in a hotel newsstand, with support from Stephen Collins.