Trivia

Currently lives in Fayetteville, North Carolina, with her husband, Charles Halsey. (November 2005)

In November 2000, she was a guest at the Asheville Film Festival (now called the Western North Carolina Film Festival) at Asheville, North Carolina along with James Whitmore, Julie Parrish, Pat Priest, Pamela Sue Martin, Rhodes Reason, Soupy Sales, Peggy Moran, Noreen Nash and Johnny Ray Meeks.

Best-remembered as "Lou-Ann Poovie", the girlfriend of "Gomer Pyle", on Gomer Pyle: USMC (1964).

For a short time after appearing in The Conversation (1974) as a seductress to Gene Hackman's character she was jokingly called "The Conversation Piece.".

Second wife and widow of Nedrick Young.

In January 1958, she posed as a North Carolina pioneer woman for an historical mural by prominent New York artist Francis V. Kughler. The mural was painted for the School of Government at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

In 1958, she made an appearance as a WAC in a Signal Corps training film. This landed her an agent, who found her roles in summer stock theater productions.

In 1956, MacRae moved to New York City and began an art and modeling career. She had studied drawing since age six and in New York, she supported herself as both a drawer of children's portraits and as a full-time job as a model at an elite specialty store. Despite having no experience in acting, she flew to Atlanta that same year and auditioned for director Otto Preminger for the title role in his film version of the story of Joan of Arc, Saint Joan (1957). The role ultimately went to Jean Seberg, but Preminger told her that although he liked her talent he did not feel she was the right type to play Joan and encouraged her to begin classes in acting. When Preminger also advised her to take speech lessons, she told him jokingly that with his thick Hungarian voice, he was a fine one to talk. He laughed and asked her how Joan of Arc could have an American Southern accent, and MacRae said that maybe Joan was from the south of France. Although she did not get the role, this pleasant experience with the notoriously unpleasant director began her interest in an acting career. In 1959, she also read for the part of Mary in Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959), but lost the role to Kathryn Grant. MacRae did take Preminger's earlier advice, taking acting classes with noted teachers Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof, and speech lessons, nearly losing her Southern accent altogether with tongue-twisters and by talking with a cork between her teeth. In 1958, she told Hollywood columnist Earl Wilson that despite the latter accomplishment, she probably would be offered nothing but roles as women from the South. This proved to be prophetic as indeed, this happened quite often during the course of her career.

In Lou-Ann Poovie Sings Again (1967), she sings the French song "C'est si bon" which was written in 1947 by Henri Betti (music) and André Hornez (lyrics).

Her first credited acting role was in a 1959 episode of an anthology series called Rendezvous. The casting director of the CBS courtroom drama The Verdict is Yours (1957) recommended her to CBS producer Edwin H. Knopf, brother of publishing tycoon Alfred A. Knopf, after receiving a wire from Knopf, who was in London because the series was shot there, with CBS airing it in America. The wire simply said, "Need American actress well-stacked." MacRae was flown to London and spent a week filming. MacRae went on to have a rather productive career in several of the popular Warner Brothers TV shows being produced at the time, but especially at CBS, with recurring roles on several shows, including Gunsmoke (1955) and Gomer Pyle: USMC (1964). Also, while in London filming in early 1959, director Otto Preminger had her contacted and arranged for her to fly to Hollywood and test for Anatomy of a Murder (1959), although she did not get that part, either. Later that year, she told Hollywood columnist Joe Hyams that at least Preminger had tested her twice and if she had not met him, she might have married a man named Louis, who became a doctor in Charleston, South Carolina, and ended up having a family instead of pursuing an acting career.

Her first television role aired on Thanksgiving afternoon 1958. It was an uncredited part as a witness in the early CBS courtroom drama The Verdict is Yours (1957). Filmed in a studio three floors above Grand Central Station in New York City, the popular show aired weekday afternoons. It was unscripted, with actors as litigants and witnesses in a case tried by real lawyers and judges before a jury consisting of studio-audience members.

Her parents sent her to Washington, D.C. to finish her secondary education at Holton-Arms, an independent college-preparatory school for girls.

MacRae was inducted into the Fayetteville Hall of Fame, in 2023, in honor of her contributions.

Elizabeth MacRae was an American actress who performed in dozens of television series and in nine feature films, working predominantly in productions released between 1958 and the late 1980s.

In 1999 and 2002, MacRae donated assorted records relating to her acting career to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These items are preserved on campus in the Southern Historical Collection at the Louis Round Wilson Library and include letters, scrapbooks with newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, audio and videotapes, as well as her working scripts from various films, television series, and stage productions in which she performed.