Jess Walton

Born in Grand Rapids, MI, and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Jess Walton began acting as a teenager and moved to Hollywood in 1969. Throughout the 1970s, she was a frequent guest star on prime-time shows like The Six Million Dollar Man and Starsky and Hutch. From 1984-1987, she appeared on the CBS soap Capitol as Kelly Harper, then joined Young and Restless in 1987 as Jill Foster Abbott. For her Y&R work, Walton received the 1997 Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress and the 1993 and 1999 Soap Opera Digest Award for Outstanding Lead Actress. The Oregon-based actress’s husband, John James, passed away in 2021. She has one son, Cole, and a stepdaughter, Alison.