Margaret Colin

Margaret Colin (born May 26, 1958) is an American actress.

Early Life
Margaret Colin was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised on Long Island. She is of Irish descent and was raised in a Roman Catholic family.

Career
After graduating from Hofstra University, Colin began her acting career in the soap opera The Edge of Night, playing an heiress and former terrorist. In seven months on that show, her character survived seven murder attempts and ended up marrying her step brother. She followed that role with a longer stint on As the World Turns, originating the role of Margo Montgomery, a character that is still part of that show almost thirty years later.

She has appeared on a number on prime time television shows, starting with Foley Square, Leg Work, and several early episodes of Chicago Hope. She played Lisa Wiseman on the 1999 series Now and Again, with Eric Close and Dennis Haysbert. More recently, she has appeared on the Law & Order spinoffs.

Since 2007, Colin has played Eleanor Waldorf- Rose, mother of Blair Waldorf on the television show Gossip Girl. In the pilot episode, Eleanor was played by OLTL actress Florencia Lozano.

Colin as also been in a number of movies, the most well known of which are probably Something Wild, Three Men and a Baby, Independence Day, Unfaithful and First Daughter. She also appeared in the play Jackie: An American Life, in which she played Jacqueline Kennedy.

During her 2003 performance of the English play A Day in the Death of Joe Egg on Broadway, Colin smoked her way through the second half of the show and dedicated the performance to Mayor Michael Bloomberg in defiance of the state's smoking ban. After the play finished its run, she gave up smoking.

Personal Life
Colin, the daughter of a New York City police officer, was born in Brooklyn, New York and was raised on Long Island. She graduated from Baldwin Senior High School in 1976.

Colin met actor Justin Deas when he played her love interest, Tom Hughes, on As the World Turns. They were married in January 1988. The couple have two sons, Sam and Joe, and Colin is step mother of her husband's daughter from his first marriage. The family moved to Upper Montclair, New Jersey in the late 1990's.

She is a pro-life activist and is the honorary co-chair of Feminists for Life, an organisation opposed to abortion.