Holland Virginia Taylor (born January 14, 1943) is an American actress. She won the 1999 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Judge Roberta Kittleson on ABC's The Practice (1998–2003). For her portrayal of Evelyn Harper on the CBS comedy Two and a Half Men (2003–15), she received a total of four Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Taylor's other notable television credits include starring roles on the sitcoms Bosom Buddies (1980–82), The Powers That Be (1992–93) and The Naked Truth (1995–98). She also appeared as Jill Ollinger on the soap opera All My Children (1981–83), as Peggy Peabody on The L Word (2004–08), and as Ida Silver on Mr. Mercedes (2017–19). In 2020, she received critical praise and her eighth Primetime Emmy Award nomination for portraying Ellen Kincaid in the Netflix miniseries Hollywood. Taylor's feature film credits include Romancing the Stone (1984) and its sequel (1985), Alice (1990), To Die For (1995), One Fine Day (1996), George of the Jungle (1997), The Truman Show (1998), Happy Accidents (2000), Keeping the Faith (2000), Legally Blonde (2001), The Wedding Date (2005), Baby Mama (2008), Gloria Bell (2018), Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020), and The Stand In (2020). Taylor wrote and starred in the one-woman play, Ann (Broadway, 2013), based on the life and work of Ann Richards. For this she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress. In 2022 she returned to the role for its long-anticipated West Coast premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse, the state theater of California. Early life Taylor was born in 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Virginia (née Davis), a painter, and C. Tracy Taylor, an attorney. She is the youngest of three daughters in the family; her sisters are Patricia and Pamela, and through Pamela, she is an aunt of director Brad Anderson. She attended high school at Westtown School, a Quaker boarding school in West Chester, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1960. She majored in Theatre at Bennington College, graduating in 1964, before moving to New York City to become an actress. Career Taylor began in the theater. Throughout the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, she appeared in numerous Broadway and off-Broadway productions, including starring roles in Simon Gray's Butley and A. R. Gurney's The Cocktail Hour; for the latter, she was nominated for a Drama Desk award. In 1983, Taylor appeared in Breakfast with Les and