Best remembered for her role as Kate McCoy, a housewife in the Walter Brennan ABC TV series, The Real McCoys, Kathleen Nolan is an American TV and film actress. The veteran actress, apart from her successful stint as an actress, she has also served two terms as the president of the Screen Actors Guild. As a matter of fact, she is the first female president of the guild. A life member of the Actors Studio and the winner of several awards including the Women in Film Crystal Award, Nolan was appointed to the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by the former President of American, Jimmy Carter in 1978.

Having started her acting career as a Broadway artist, she played the role of Wendy in the Styne-Comden-Green original production Peter Pan (1954-55). Some of her most notable acting credits in TV and films include Gunsmoke, Murder, She Wrote, Meet McGraw, Ben Casey, Tombstone Territory, and The Last Movie Star (2018), an English drama directed by Adam Rifkin.