Born Nedinia Hutton, she is the daughter of Wall Street millionaire E.F. Hutton and Post Cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, an American aristocrat and socialite. After one year of college she dropped out to enroll at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. For a decade she worked in stock, on Broadway, and on TV, then made her screen debut in Desk Set (1957). She played cool, aloof women in a number of movies through the mid '60s, then took a decade off from film acting after she married actor Cliff Robertson in 1966. Her TV credits include roles in the series Checkmate and Cannon. She returned to the screen in occasional roles from 1975. She later divorced Robertson. In 1988 she and former actor Ted Hartley, an investment banker, started Pavilion, a film and entertainment development and production company; in 1989 they acquired RKO, forming RKO Pavilion, with Merrill as creative director. She and Hartley married in 1989.
by Rovi
biography
