Jeanette Nolan began her acting career in the Pasadena Community Playhouse and, while a student at Los Angeles City College, made her radio debut in 1932 in "Omar Khayyam", the first transcontinental broadcast from station KHJ. Her film debut was probably also her best part, Lady Macbeth opposite director/actor Orson Welles's Macbeth (1948). Her final film role was as Tom Booker's (Robert Redford's) mother "Ellen Booker" in L'homme qui murmurait à l'oreille des chevaux (1998). She appeared in more than 300 television shows, including episode roles in Perry Mason (1957), Les espions (1965), MacGyver (1985), Alfred Hitchcock présente (1955), and as a regular on The Richard Boone Show (1963) and Le Virginien (1962). She received four Emmy nominations. She died, aged 86, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, following a stroke.
