Dixie Carter, from McLemoresville, Tennessee, entered UT in 1957 as a music major. Since the age of four, she had wanted to be an opera singer, but a botched tonsillectomy at age seven ruined her chances of becoming a diva. A member of Delta Delta Delta sorority, she was popular on campus and was selected Miss Volunteer—the most beautiful UT coed—of 1958. In 1959 she was again selected as one of Tennessee’s beauties.
When the UT Music Department advised her to give up singing and concentrate on the piano, she transferred to Rhodes College, where she became involved in theater. She graduated from the University of Memphis and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Rhodes College.
In 1963 she moved to New York and landed a role off Broadway in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale. She took a hiatus from acting to become a wife and mother but returned to the stage in productions such as Kiss Me Kate, Sextet, Pal Joey, and Buried Inside Extra when her marriage ended in divorce. She landed several roles on sitcoms, including The Edge of Night, Filthy Rich, and Diff’rent Strokes.
She moved to Los Angeles in 1979 and married Hal Holbrook in 1980. In 1986 she was cast as Julia Sugarbaker in the sitcom Designing Women and starred in the series for seven years. She performed in a one-woman cabaret across the country and starred in the Broadway hit Master Class. She then was cast as an attorney in the CBS series Family Law. Carter was also featured in several made-for-TV movies.
She had a face-lift at age 46 so she wouldn’t be pegged as the old one on Designing Women. A yoga enthusiast, she created instructional tapes for home workouts.