Background
Phillips was born Margaret Linton in Everett, Washington, to Charles and Myrtle Linton.
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Peg Phillips
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Career
She wanted to be an actress from the age of four and performed in dinner theater as a hobby. She was the wife of Daniel Greene, a Navy man stationed in the Territory of Hawaii when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred. Both marriages ended in divorce.
She lived with Kathy, Virginia and Arthur in Santa Cruz, California, in the early to mid-1960s.
Her oldest daughter, Elisabeth, had left the household. She worked as an accountant at Sweet Service in Santa Cruz during that time.
After retiring from accounting, Phillips moved back to Washington to enroll in drama school at the University of Washington, but never completed her degree "because I started getting so much work."
She started acting professionally in her late 60s. Her first film performance was in the television movie Chase in 1985.
In 1990, she originated the role of Ruth-Anne Miller on Northern Exposure.
The character had been intended to be intermittent, but gradually appeared more frequently until she became a regular. After the fifth season of the show was wrapped up in 1995, she was undergoing heart surgery when an aortic aneurysm ruptured. Had she not already been on the operating table, it probably would have been fatal.
After Northern Exposure, Phillips played several guest roles, especially on 7th Heaven.
She played the dude ranch-owning godmother of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen"s characters in How the West Was Fun. Her last role was a guest spot on Emergency in 2000.
She also founded the Woodinville Repertory Theatre in 1998 and served as its artistic director in Woodinville, Washington, until her death. She died in 2002 from pulmonary disease in Seattle, aged 84.
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Born
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Died
November 7, 2002 (aged 84)