Ann Jillian

Ann Jillian, born Ann Jura Nauseda on January 29, 1950, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is an American actress and singer whose career spans more than six decades. The daughter of Lithuanian immigrants Juozas and Margarita Nausėda, she grew up speaking Lithuanian fluently and was raised as a devout Roman Catholic.

Jillian entered the entertainment industry as a child performer in 1960, making her film debut as Little Bo Peep in the Disney production Babes in Toyland. Two years later, she appeared as Dainty June in the 1962 film adaptation of Gypsy, starring Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood. Her television work during the 1960s included a recurring role in the 1965–66 season of the sitcom Hazel and a guest appearance in the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "Mute," in which she played the mute telepath Ilse Nielsen under the screen credit "Ann Jilliann." In the early 1970s, she provided voice work for animated series including Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and Sealab 2020. In 1983, the Young Artist Foundation honored her with its Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award.

After a period away from Hollywood during which she worked in a department store and studied psychology, Jillian returned to performing. She toured in musical comedies in the late 1970s, among them Sammy Cahn's Words and Music. Her appearance alongside Mickey Rooney in the Chicago production of Goodnight Ladies led directly to her Broadway debut: the same producers cast her in the original company of Sugar Babies, which opened in 1979 and also starred Rooney and Ann Miller. On March 27, 1978, she had married Andy Murcia, a Chicago police sergeant who subsequently retired to manage her career. She also starred in I Love My Wife at the Drury Lane Theatre in Chicago during this period.

Jillian rose to national prominence in the 1980s through the ABC sitcom It's a Living, in which she played the sultry waitress Cassie Cranston beginning in 1980. She was the last performer signed to the series and received last billing. The show ran two seasons on ABC before cancellation, then found unexpected success in syndication. During her time on the series, she portrayed Mae West in a 1982 television film, earning Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for lead actress. In 1983, she appeared in John Hughes's film Mr. Mom alongside Michael Keaton and Teri Garr, and in the miniseries Malibu, which starred Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, and James Coburn. That same year she headlined her own sitcom, Jennifer Slept Here, which ran through 1984. She then took a role in the miniseries Ellis Island, for which she received an Emmy Award nomination. Bob Hope selected her for six of his television specials, including two filmed while entertaining U.S. troops in Beirut in 1984 and Saudi Arabia in 1991. In 1985, she played the Red Queen opposite Carol Channing's White Queen in a television musical adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. That same year, It's a Living resumed production for first-run syndication, and Jillian returned to the series under contractual obligation. She departed after the 1985–86 season. In 1986, she played identical twins in The Killer in the Mirror, and she later starred in the NBC series Ann Jillian, which aired 13 episodes during the 1989–90 season.

Before the resumption of It's a Living in 1985, Jillian was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 35. Her treatment included a double mastectomy, and she became a prominent advocate for cancer research and prevention. Her experience was the subject of the 1988 television film The Ann Jillian Story, in which she portrayed herself. The production took two years to complete due to disagreements over tone, the extent of medical content, and the portrayal of her and her husband's reactions to her illness. For her performance, Jillian received her third Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special and won the 1989 Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV.

Jillian and Murcia's son, Andrew Joseph Murcia, was born in 1992. She continued acting through the 1990s, accumulating ten television movie roles during the decade, including the 1994 film Heart of a Child, in which she played the mother of an unborn child with a heart defect. Her screen work became less frequent in the late 1990s as she chose to focus on raising her son and on breast cancer advocacy. On September 12, 2015, she was inducted into the National Lithuanian American Hall of Fame.