Liz Bishop ’85 achieves dream of acting in films, multiple TV series
Actor who appears in new ‘Sorry, Baby’ film says, ‘I want people to know that it is never too late to pursue their dreams’
Liz Bishop ’85 is experiencing a fulfilling “third act” in life, landing several roles in recent years that put her on the big screen and in a few television series.
She appears in A24’s new film “Sorry, Baby,” a black comedy drama that received critical acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival. It will be released in select theaters on June 27 and have a wider release on July 18.
The Boston-based actor also was in the 2023 holiday comedy drama “The Holdovers” and the latest season of the postapocalyptic TV horror series “The Walking Dead: Dead City."
“Let’s first talk about the guilty pleasure that is ‘The Walking Dead!’ It was a bucket list dream to get to be involved in that universe,” she said. “Fortunately, I did not have to wear five pounds of special effects makeup. My character, Gretchen, is a survivalist, and you’ll have to stay tuned to see how her journey ends.”
Bishop — who starred in several high school productions (supporting character roles and solos in musicals) at Ursuline Academy in Cincinnati — said she has been making up for “40 years of lost time” after she shelved her dream of becoming an actor to satisfy her reluctant parents after she was accepted to Miami University.
The decision caused her to flounder before she realized that Zoology wasn’t a good fit and she selected Elementary Education as a major — joking that “becoming an educator is like acting because I’d have a captive audience in my classroom.”
Bishop has been gaining new, much bigger audiences since 2019 when she began her theatrical journey working in the background as an extra on major productions such as Greta Gerwig’s film “Little Women” and the limited drama series “Defending Jacob” in 2020.
Since then, she has attained credited roles — and respect.
“I want people to know that it is never too late to pursue their dreams,” she said. “Current students and new grads have the golden opportunity to build their world and incorporate what makes them feel alive now. When someone my age learns that I am having the time of my life doing what I know I was meant to do all along, I ask them: What made them happiest when they were young, and why aren’t they pursuing that now?”
Pandemic acting classes via Zoom
Bishop credits her success at this stage of life to a combination of factors.
“The simple fact is that I have been very lucky. However, I have also worked very hard in an extremely short period of time. I told Mike (her Miami Merger spouse from the Class of '86) that it would be like me going to grad school at 57!” she said. “I had to then jump into acting classes — thankfully on Zoom — out of Los Angeles, NYC, and Atlanta. I’ve had to read the books, attend seminars, and learn the ropes.”
She noted that the COVID-19 pandemic “changed so much about the business of auditioning, and I had to learn all about the tech that is needed to be seen as leveling the playing field just to be in the same audition room as others who have been doing this since they graduated from college.”
It all started after a community theater friend posted on Facebook that he had been chosen to work background on the classic “Little Women.”
“I was intrigued, to say the least, and contacted him to find out how I could do this too,” she said. “I was fortunate to be chosen to work multiple days on ‘Little Women’ and wore different 1850s wardrobe dresses each time. Playing ‘dress-up’ was half of the fun.”
‘Sorry, Baby’ and other roles
Bishop appears in the trailer for “Sorry, Baby," which closed the recent “Directors’ Fortnight” (an independent sidebar to Cannes Film Festival) because, she said, organizers wanted to end it with a film that “powerfully engages with some very contemporary debates.”
She plays Elizabeth, a similar role to the office secretary she played in “The Holdovers.”
“I am very fortunate to have a wonderful New England agent who sent me the eight-page audition for ‘Sorry, Baby,’ intuiting that I’d be perfect for the role,” she said. “Hopefully, it wasn’t just that I had graying hair, but that probably helped.”
After working on “Little Women” and “Defending Jacob,” she networked with other actors and made her way out of the background and into speaking roles in undergraduate- and master’s level-student films.
“Independent feature work has been extremely rewarding as well. I worked in Dallas on a feature film called ‘ImPossible.’ I portrayed a nurse in this very important film about one man’s struggle with diabetes, but it is a message about the lack of diet and health education, as well as a lack of access to healthier foods in many African American communities,” she said of “ImPossible,” now on its festival run.
She also did a couple of earlier TV series — depicting Frieda in an episode of “Middlehood” where she played a pivotal role in shaping the life of another character, and Margaret in “Kevin Can — Himself,” which was her first principal role.
“I was genuinely accepted as an equal by my scene partners, Meghan Leathers (“Don’t Look Up”) and Raymond Lee (“Quantum Leap,” “Top Gun: Maverick”). These seasoned professionals made me feel right at home,” she said.
‘You find a way’
Bishop said it was hard not having her parents endorse her dream to become an actor all those years ago.
“It was frustrating because I had been in all of the shows in my high school. But times were different 40 years ago, and I felt that I had a duty to defer to my parents’ judgment at that time,” she said. “They wanted me to have a career where I could have a more reliable paycheck. It wasn’t until just a few years before my mom’s passing, she said that they should not have pressured me not to pursue acting.”
She started inching toward her dream after she married and had children and developed a fulfilling life as a teacher, mother, and community activist.
“When you are compelled to create, you find a way,” she said, noting that after they bought their first home, she discovered a local theater company and began singing in the chorus for the entire Gilbert and Sullivan Light Opera canon.
“One of my favorite lead singing roles was as Effy Krayneck in the musical ‘The Spitfire Grill,’” she said.
She also developed a fairly extensive regional commercial acting career, such as for L.L.Bean, and did commercial voice-over work for Blue Cross & Blue Shield.
“I am so fortunate to have had a job doing commercial and industrial voice-over from my home studio. This allowed me to be involved in town and school volunteer positions. As a mother of three, I was able to help our children with their own creative projects. I became the costume head for our kids’ school plays, and I poured my heart and soul into their Halloween costumes,” she said.
She even wrote, directed and starred in a unique Halloween night “trick-or-treat show” each year in their home that became so popular, they had to hire a private police detail to help control traffic for the average 400-plus attendees each year.
“I think it is important for our children to see each of us doing what brings us great joy and energy,” she said.
So after both her parents were gone and she and her husband were about to become emptynesters, she took the leap.
Everyone she has met in the industry has been “welcoming to this total newbie and so supportive at every turn to share their knowledge,” she said.
“By the time I did my second background stint on ‘Defending Jacob’ — three months after ‘Little Women’ — I realized that I had found my ‘people,’ and there was good money to be made as a professional actor.”
