Parker was born in Knoxville, Tennessee on October 27, 1938, and grew up in Memphis. Descendant of a prominent Southern family, she is a great-great-granddaughter of Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II and a third-great-granddaughter of Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, an uncle of Confederate General James Longstreet. She began a philosophy B.A. at Vassar College before receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree from Rhodes College (then known as Southwestern) and a Master of Arts degree in speech and drama from the University of Iowa.
Parker played the role of "Laura Banner" in the opening sequence of the pilot for the television series The Incredible Hulk (1977), and the fashion model-witch "Madelaine" in the Kolchak: The Night Stalker episode "The Trevi Collection". Her other television work includes appearances on Emergency "One of Those Days"(1975-S5Ep8), Kung Fu, The Six Million Dollar Man (1976-S3Ep17: "The Secret of Bigfoot Part 1"), Police Woman, Kojak, Alice, Quincy, M.E., Hawaii Five-O, The Rockford Files, Highway to Heaven, Switch, Baretta, Galactica 1980 ("The Night The Cylons Landed", Parts I & II), Barnaby Jones (1980-The Price of Anger), the CBS daytime serial Capitol, and the ABC daytime serial One Life to Live. She played secretary Wanda in the 1977 television miniseries Washington: Behind Closed Doors and had a recurring role in the short-lived television series Jessica Novak.
Parker reprised the role of Angelique in Night of Dark Shadows, the second feature film based on Dark Shadows. She was joined by her Dark Shadows castmates Kate Jackson, David Selby, Grayson Hall, Nancy Barrett, John Karlen, and Thayer David. This film was more loosely based on the series than House of Dark Shadows was, and it did not fare as well at the box office as the first film. She appeared opposite Robert De Niro in the 1970 Brian De Palma film Hi, Mom!, but her best known film role came in the Oscar-winning drama Save the Tiger (1973), starring Jack Lemmon, in which she played a sympathetic prostitute who is devastated when her client suffers a near fatal heart attack. In 1975, she played the wife of Peter Fonda's character in Race with the Devil.

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