Margaret JoBeth Williams (born December 6, 1948 in Houston, Texas) is an American film and television actress and director, and current President of the Screen Actors Guild Foundation. Williams is the daughter of Frances Faye (née Adams), a dietitian, and Fredric Roger Williams, an opera singer and manager of a wire and cable company. Williams grew up in the South Park neighborhood of Houston, and she attended Jones High School. She attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, intending to become a child psychologist. Instead, she turned to theater, training with Jim Barnhill and John Emigh as well as at the Trinity Repertory Company, taking voice lessons to neutralize her Texan accent. Then she moved to New York City and began to appear in television series in the mid-1970s. Williams' first television role was on the Boston-produced first-run syndicated children's television series Jabberwocky, which debuted in 1974. Her character was named, appropriately enough, JoBeth. She joined the "Jabberwocky" cast in season two, replacing the original hostess, Joanne Sopko. The series ran until 1978.