For someone who has acted opposite Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, and Debra Winger, Betty King is remarkably down to earth.

“I never thought of myself as more than a mom,” says King. “No one was more surprised than me when my acting career took off.”

Not that she didn’t find life in the spotlight intriguing.

As a precocious 12-year-old growing up in Burlington, N.C., King once walked into a local radio station and asked a producer to listen to her sing.

“Shirley Temple was only a few years older than me, and she was already a star,” says King. “I thought I needed to get busy if I was going to make a name for myself.”

Impressed with her voice, the producer gave King her own radio show.

“I went to the studio every Saturday morning and sang,” says King. “I was also singing in churches and schools. By the time I was in high school, I was a paid soloist at a local church.”

King met her husband, Ben, during her senior year in high school. The couple married two weeks before her high school graduation.

“Ben was in the Navy at the time, so we moved around during the early years of our marriage,” says King. “And once we started a family, we had four children over a six-year span.”

Actress Betty King and her husband, Ben, relax in their apartment home at Highland Springs.

New challenges

Setting aside her musical ambitions, King took on the role of full-time mom, adapting to a new set of challenges.

“Our third child was born with a chronic illness,” she says. “His care took a lot of time and energy. After many years of constant caregiving, my husband recognized that I needed to do something for myself and encouraged me to go back to school.”

She started scouting out universities in the north Texas region and enrolled at Texas Woman’s University (TWU) in Denton in 1970, at the age of 38.

“I chose TWU because they had a good music department and they weren’t going to make me take math classes,” she says. “That was the winning combination.”

King majored in vocal performance with a minor in drama.

“Music was the obvious choice for a major,” she says. “But when I started acting and directing performances on campus, a new world of possibilities opened up.”

King excelled both onstage and in the classroom, graduating with honors in 1974.

“I surprised myself,” she says. “I thought my professors mixed up my grades with someone else’s.”

Out of the classroom, on to the stage

King stayed at TWU for two more years and received her master’s degree in 1976. After graduating, she was hired to teach drama classes at Southwestern Christian College in Terrell, Tex.

“I still felt I had a lot to learn, both backstage and in front of an audience, in order to stay ahead of my students,” says King, who took professional classes at Kim Dawson Studios in Dallas to enhance her teaching.

Encouraged by those who saw her act, King began to audition for parts. “No one was more shocked than me when I started getting callbacks,” she says. “I started with basic jobs, working on commercials and industrial films.”

King’s film career progressed to major motion pictures, and she was cast in three Oscar-winning movies: Tender Mercies (1983), Silkwood (1983), and Terms of Endearment (1983).

“Terms of Endearment was my biggest part,” says King. “I was cast as the third female lead, playing the maid to Shirley MacLaine and the nanny to Debra Winger. The movie was shot in multiple locations across the country, and I was the first actress from the Dallas Screen Actors Guild to have a multiple-page contract detailing the different shoots. It was very exciting.”

King returned closer to home for her work in Silkwood, the first movie filmed at the Studios at Las Colinas in Irving, Tex.

“I was a little starstruck on the set of Silkwood,” says King. “When I went into the makeup room and Meryl Streep was sitting in the next chair, I was tongue-tied. They [make-up artists] practically had to pull me into the room. What do you say to Meryl Streep? All I could think to say was ‘hi.’”

After a 20-year career, King retired from the film industry and now makes her home at Highland Springs in north Dallas.

“I’ve joined the Network of Friends on campus and plan to join the chorus soon,” she says. “My family also keeps me busy.”

King has six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Asked if she passed along any of her acting talent, she chuckles. “My youngest great-granddaughter is only three months old,” she says, “but I think she’ll make a name for herself. I can already tell she’s got star quality.”