New York City-born Jill Clayburgh's career began at the Charles Street Repertory Theatre in Boston. After making her Broadway debut in The Sudden & Accidental Re-education of Horse Johnson in 1968, she attracted attention as the love interest in two hit musicals: Hannah Cohen in The Rothschilds, the match of Nathan Rothschild in the Harnick and Bock's 1970 musical; and two years later, as Catherine, a mate for the aimless hero of Stephen Schwartz's hit musical Pippin. In the latter, she originated the songs "Kind of Woman" and "I Guess I'll Miss the Man."

In Paul Mazursky's era-defining 1978 movie,"An Unmarried Woman" , Ms. Clayburgh played Erica, a seemingly content housewife and mother who finds herself unexpectedly divorced after 16 years. She reels from her husband's sudden confession of infidelity — famously throwing up in the street shortly after getting the news — but finds a new life, a new lover in Bohemian painter Alan Bates, and an independence which both confuses and delights her. Upon the movie's release, Ms. Clayburgh became a filmic representation of the Women's Movement and its social repercussions. Ms. Clayburgh stayed on to appear in the brief Broadway premiere of Tom Stoppard's Jumpers, but thereafter she devoted herself to Hollywood. For a time, mother and daughter roomed together in a New York apartment, both plying their trades on different stages

Source: Playbill.com