How “Family Affair” actress Kathy Garver evolved from ‘60s sitcom staple to ClearCaptions commercial star: ‘Yes! It’s me!’

Joey NolfiTue, August 25, 2026 at 4:22 PM UTC

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Kathy Garver for ClearCaptions; Garver on ‘Family Affair’Credit: ClearCaptions; EverettKey Points -

Family Affair sitcom star Kathy Garver exclusively tells Entertainment Weekly about going from ‘60s sitcom staple to ClearCaptions commercial star.

The actress said she now gets “more recognition” from the daytime ad block than Family Affair.

“I want to always be working,” Garver tells EW of auditioning for the part, which she says she’s proud of.

Classic Family Affair sitcom star Kathy Garver wants you to know that your eyes aren’t deceiving you.

“Yes! It’s me!” the 80-year-old reacts when Entertainment Weekly asks what she’d say to people who think they might recognize the blonde-haired, infectiously grinning actress at the center of a daytime round of ClearCaptions commercials that often air during morning talk show blocks on the major networks.

“I get more recognition than from Family Affair,” she tells EW of the commercials, which began over five decades after she landed the beloved role of Cissy — the eldest of three orphaned siblings who travel to New York to live with their well-to-do uncle — in the 1966 CBS series Family Affair.

She adds, “I’m in the grocery store and I get these double-takes of people coming up and saying, ‘You do that phone commercial! I recognized you right away!’ [and] ‘I had a bet with my wife of who that was, but we figured it out!’”

Though she’s steadily worked since she was seven years old (she had roles as a child in films like Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter and Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments), Garver is happy “having a commercial that has been running for years now,” as she’s starred in several ClearCaptions commercials as a loving grandmother who connects with her grandchildren through the use of a screen-based landline that generates captions translating phone conversations for the hard-of-hearing character.

Despite her wealth of Hollywood experience stemming from her five-year run on Family Affair through 1971 (Garver even has a recent Grammy nomination for audiobook narration), the star tells EW she booked the ClearCaptions ad on a “regular interview,” and auditioned just like other working actors.

“I had a friend who said, ‘Kathy, when you die, on your tombstone they’re going to put, ‘Kathy is not here. She’s on another audition,’” Garver notes. “I happen to audition a lot. And especially with Zoom, but this was before Zoom, so I got in my car, drove there, and went up and met the people.”

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The team, she says, didn’t know “at all” who she was, or the legacy she brought with her to the audition. But when they finally saw the feedback and the vast amount of people recognizing her in the ads, “that made them even happier,” and they asked her to film more commercials for the service.

“It’s the kind of job that one can do” for a long time, Garver says, adding that there’s no shame in extending performance work even after one’s perceived prime. She cites friends like Jaclyn Smith, Donna Mills, and more in her assessment.

‘Family Affair’ cast Anissa Jones, Brian Keith, Kathy Garver, Sebastian Cabot, and Johnny WhitakerCredit: CBS Photo Archive/Getty

“We’re all still working because we love to. I’m on another plane than them, I must admit, but I’ve been working since I was seven years old. I’ve had an incredibly long career,” she says.

While she cut her teeth on major industry projects, from TV to film and stage, Garver says it’s actually a “wise neighbor” — not a Hollywood peer — who gave her the best career advice that motivates her through her current output (including a new book, Romancing With the Stars, an upcoming movie based on Pollyanna, and a 60th anniversary celebrity cruise honoring six decades of Family Affair.)

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“You fix up your budget. In my budget, I want to always be working,” stresses Garver. “I guess I’ve been blessed enough to touch my toe into every single one [of the industry’s corners] and be rather successful in them all. In not one of them [am I] a super household name, but, if you see me in the grocery store, you’ll know I did that ClearCaptions commercial!”

Watch Garver in the ClearCaptions commercial above.

on Entertainment Weekly

Original Article on Source

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