Audrie Neenan

Audrie J. Neenan, born October 28, 1950, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is an American actress whose career has spanned stage, film, and television. She is one of five siblings, with a brother and four sisters, and grew up in a family with roots in performance: her mother and aunt worked in vaudeville as the Sunshine Sisters, accompanied on piano by their brother. Neenan's own interest in acting took hold at age nine when she watched her sister perform in The Diary of Anne Frank. Her family later relocated to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, after her father purchased a McDonald's franchise there, and she continued pursuing acting through school productions while also working in the family business. She graduated from Bishop McDevitt High School in Harrisburg and went on to attend Barat College for Women in Lake Forest, Illinois, where she continued acting.

Neenan made her Broadway debut opposite Faye Dunaway in William Alfred's The Curse of an Aching Heart, launching a stage career that extended from 1982 to 2011. Her additional Broadway credits include Oklahoma!, the play Picnic, Sister Act, and The Odd Couple. Beyond Broadway, she performed at The Apollo and the Chicago Shakespeare Festival.

On screen, Neenan is perhaps most recognized for her portrayal of Ray Parkins, a female rapist, in the 1983 Clint Eastwood action film Sudden Impact. Her film work has frequently cast her in roles as judges, policewomen, and waitresses. She appeared as a waitress in Funny Farm (1988) and as a policewoman in See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989). In 2006, she played a woman at a bar in Martin Scorsese's The Departed, and in 2008 she appeared as Sister Raymond in Doubt, the John Patrick Shanley-directed film starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Earlier film credits include Towing (1978), Somewhere in Time (1980), and Love at Stake (1987). Later roles include Ghost Town (2008), BuzzKill (2012), Shelter (2014), Crashing (2017), and Puzzle (2018).

On television, Neenan is known for recurring appearances as Judge Lois Preston on both Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She has also appeared on The Cosby Show, Ally McBeal, Friends, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Not Necessarily the News, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.