Detailed Biography

Dianne Wiest is an American actress. She has had a successful career on stage, television, and film, and has won two Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award. Wiest has also been nominated for a BAFTA Award.

Early life

Wiest was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Her father was a college dean and former psychiatric social worker for the U.S. Army, and her Scottish-born mother, Anne, worked as a nurse; her parents met in Algiers. She has two brothers: Greg and Don Wiest. Wiest's original ambition was to be a ballerina, but in late high school she switched her goal to theatre. She made her film debut in It's My Turn , but did not establish herself as a film actress until her work for Woody Allen in the 1980s.

Stage career

Wiest studied theatre at the University of Maryland, leaving after her third term in order to tour with a Shakespearean troupe, eventually appearing in a supporting role in the New York Shakespeare Festival production Ashes. She appeared at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, CT, playing the title role in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and understudied off-Broadway in Kurt Vonnegut's Happy Birthday, Wanda June at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. She made her Broadway debut in Robert Anderson's Solitaire/Double Solitaire, taking over in the role of the daughter in 1971. She landed a four-year job as a member of the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., appearing in many plays including a memorable Emily in Our Town, Honey in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and leading roles in S. Ansky's The Dybbuk, Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths and Shaw's "Heartbreak House." She also toured the USSR with the Arena Stage Company.

In 1976, Wiest went to the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and played leading roles in Amlin Gray's Pirates and Christopher Durang's A History of the American Film. At Joe Papp's Public Theatre she took over the lead in Ashes, and played Cassandra in Agamemnon, directed by Andrei Şerban. She appeared in two plays by Tina Howe, Museum and the The Art of Dining. In the latter, Wiest's role as the shy and awkward authoress Elizabeth Barrow Colt won every off-Broadway theatre award for her performance: an Obie Award, a Theatre World Award, and the Clarence Derwent Award, given yearly for the most promising performance in New York theatre. In early 1980, she appeared on Broadway in Frankenstein, directed by Tom Moore, portrayed Desdemona in Othello opposite James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer and co-starred with John Lithgow in Christopher Durang's romantic screwball comedy Beyond Therapy, directed by John Madden. . Also in the 80s she was acclaimed for her performances in Hedda Gabler, directed by Lloyd Richards at Yale Repertory Theatre, and in Harold Pinter's A Kind of Alaska, Janusz Glowacki's Hunting Cockroaches, and Lanford Wilson's Serenading Louie. Her most recent New York theatre appearances included performances as Arkadina in an off-Broadway revival of The Seagull and as Kate Keller in a controversial Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons, opposite John Lithgow, Patrick Wilson, and Katie Holmes. In 2009, Wiest appeared in the National Memorial Day Concert on the Mall in Washington, D.C. in a dialogue with Katie Holmes celebrating the life of an American veteran seriously wounded in Iraq, José Pequeño.

Film and Television

After Wiest became established as a strong film actress through her work in Woody Allen's films, she was available for the stage less frequently, though she performed in the 1990s in In the Summer House, Square One, Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl, and Naomi Wallace's One Flea Spare. In 2003, she appeared with Al Pacino and Marisa Tomei in Oscar Wilde's Salome. In 2005, she starred in Kathleen Tolan's Memory House, and then at Lincoln Center in the late Wendy Wasserstein's final play Third, directed by Daniel Sullivan.

Under Allen's direction, Wiest won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Hannah and Her Sisters . She also appeared in Allen's films The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days and September.

She followed her Oscar success with performances in The Lost Boys and Bright Lights, Big City before starring with Steve Martin, Mary Steenburgen, Jason Robards, Keanu Reeves and Martha Plimpton in Ron Howard's Parenthood, for which she received her second Oscar nomination.

In 1990, Wiest starred in Edward Scissorhands. She returned to Woody Allen in 1994 for Bullets Over Broadway, a comedy set in 1920s New York City, winning her second Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Helen Sinclair, a boozy, glamorous, and loud star of the stage.

Wiest appeared in the films The Birdcage and Practical Magic and the television mini-series The 10th Kingdom . From 2000 to 2002, Wiest portrayed interim District Attorney Nora Lewin in the long-running NBC crime drama Law & Order.

In 2007, Wiest starred alongside Steve Carell in Dan in Real Life and also as Gabriel Byrne's therapist, Gina Toll, on the television series In Treatment. For the latter, it was announced on 17 July 2008 that Wiest had received an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. She received the Emmy for her role in the HBO Original Series "In Treatment" 21 September 2008.

Wiest had a key supporting role in 2008's Synecdoche, New York.

Personal life

Marriage is by no means an obligation and Wiest, a strong feminist, has decided it was not an activity she would be participating in. It is very rude of people to think women have to get married, have children, and be a homemaker, Wiest said in an interview in early 2003. She has two adopted daughters, Emily and Lily . She graduated from the University of Maryland in 1969 with a degree in Arts and Sciences. She was in a long-term relationship with a New York talent agent, Sam Cohn, for many years.