Marlene Warfield

Marlene Ronetta Warfield (June 19, 1941 – April 6, 2025) was an American actress who worked in theatre, film, and television.

Warfield was born in Queens, New York, on June 19, 1941, and brought up in Brooklyn. She attended the High School of Performing Arts and began acting on stage as a teenager, in 1957. She later attended the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and the American Institute of Theatre and TV Arts.

Warfield began her career in New York, working on stage and screen. She moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s. She portrayed the underground revolutionary Laureen Hobbs in the 1976 film Network and played Victoria Butterfield on the television sitcom Maude (1977–1978). Warfield starred in the play Janie Jones at the New Theatre, London (opened July 15, 1968).

She won the Clarence Derwent Award in 1969 for Outstanding Broadway Debut Performance and a Theatre World Award for the role of Clara in The Great White Hope, which she reprised in the 1970 film version.

In 1967, Warfield married William Horsey (died 1993); they had a son. She died of lung cancer at a Los Angeles hospital on April 6, 2025, at the age of 83.