Best known for her work on daytime dramas, Conley launched her acting career on the stage in her teens. After high school, she toured with theater companies and appeared in productions of Night of the Iguana and Cyrano de Bergerac (both opposite Richard Chamberlain). A bit part in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds led to more film roles and a number of prime-time guest spots on series such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Gunsmoke and Cagney & Lacey. But she shined on soap operas with tough-gal turns on Days of our Lives, Capitol and General Hospital. Her villainous portrayal of Rose DeVille on The Young and the Restless inspired Bold and the Beautiful cocreator William J. Bell to dream up the role of fashion mogul Sally Spectra just for Conley. Her tenure began in 1989, and throughout the decades her wild and zany performances earned her two Daytime Emmy nominations and six Soap Opera Digest Awards. In 2006, she battled stomach cancer, and although the illness kept her off The Bold and the Beautiful for months, she was still part of the cast when she succumbed to the disease in January 2007.