Holliday was born in Jasper, Alabama, the daughter of Ernest Sullivan Holliday, a truck driver, and Velma Mabell Holliday (née Cain). She grew up in Childersburg and Sylacauga, where her brother Doyle's boyhood friend Jim Nabors lived. Before acting, Holliday worked as a piano teacher in her native Alabama, and then in Florida. She began her acting career as a member of the Asolo Theatre Company in Sarasota, Florida, where she stayed for 10 years. Holliday is an Episcopalian who sang in the St. Andrews Episcopal Choir in Mobile, Alabama and in January 2010 she appeared as herself in an official advertisement campaign for the Episcopal Church. In New York City, she sang in the Grace Church (Episcopal) Choral Society in Greenwich Village and ran a chamber music series there called the Willow Ensemble (1995-2008).
In 1973, Holliday moved to New York City and appeared in Alice Childress's play Wedding Band at the Public Theater. More than a year later, she was cast in the Broadway hit All Over Town. While working on All Over Town, she befriended the play's director, Dustin Hoffman, who later worked with her on the 1976 movie All the President's Men.
In 1976 Holliday was cast — in what would be her major break — as sassy, man-hungry waitress Flo Castleberry on the American sitcom Alice. Her character coined the popular catchphrase "Kiss my grits!" The phrase became part of the American vocabulary. Holliday starred in Alice from 1976 to 1980, and then moved to her own short-lived spin-off show, titled Flo, in which Flo left her residence in Arizona and moved back home. The show was successful during its abbreviated first season, but ratings declined during the following season due to a time change, and it was canceled in 1981.

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