Denny Dillon

Denny Dillon is an American actress, comedian, and improv performer born on May 18, 1951, in Cleveland, Ohio. She built her career across stage, television, and film, earning a Tony Award nomination for her Broadway work and later gaining wide recognition through a long-running television role.

Dillon's Broadway career spanned from 1974 to 2003. She made her Broadway debut playing Agnes in the 1974 revival of Gypsy, which starred Angela Lansbury, and the following year appeared in the 1975 revival of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth. In 1980 she took part in the stage adaptation of Harold and Maude. Her most prominent Broadway credit came in 1983, when she played Mickey in My One and Only, a Gershwin musical featuring Tommy Tune and Twiggy. That performance earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Two decades later, Dillon returned to Broadway as a replacement cast member in the 2003 play The Enchanted April.

Her film debut came in Saturday Night Fever, in which she played Doreen, a character who approaches John Travolta's Tony and asks to wipe his forehead. Her television debut followed in the children's series Hot Hero Sandwich, which aired from 1979 to 1980. In 1980, Dillon auditioned successfully for the sixth season of Saturday Night Live, beating out Mercedes Ruehl for the final female cast member slot. She had previously appeared on the program's third episode in October 1975, performing her "Talent Night at the Convent" act after being passed over during auditions for the show's premiere season. During her single season as a cast member, she played recurring characters including Debbie, a Valley Girl's best friend; Mary Louise, a disturbed child with a hand puppet named Sam the Snake; Nadine, a neurotic customer at a hair salon; and Pinky Waxman, co-host of a segment called "What's It All About?" She also performed celebrity impressions of Amy Carter, Betsy Maxwell, Jean Harris, and Yoko Ono. She subsequently co-starred on the Fox sitcom Women in Prison.

From 1990 to 1996, Dillon starred as Toby Pedalbee, the loyal assistant to Martin Tupper played by Brian Benben, on the HBO comedy series Dream On. In 1994 she portrayed Roseanne Barr in the television movie Roseanne: An Unauthorized Biography. Additional television appearances include a role as Judy on the 1987 comedy series Dr. Science and a 1988 guest spot on Night Court. She provided voice work for the 2002 animated feature Ice Age and had earlier voiced the character Meadow Morn in the 1983 animated special The Magic of Herself the Elf.

Dillon's regional theater work includes a December 1996 appearance in the musical Triumph of Love at Center Stage in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was part of a comic trio. In 2003 she appeared in 8 by Tenn, a program of Tennessee Williams plays at Hartford Stage. She starred as Beatrice in the world premiere of Tom Dudzick's Don't Talk to the Actors at Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo, New York, in September 2007. In late 2010 she appeared in a developmental production of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach at Goodspeed Musicals in Chester, Connecticut, and in January 2012 she played Berthe in Boeing-Boeing at Hartford Stage.

Since 2006, Dillon has led Improv Nation, an organization based in New York's Hudson Valley. She serves as an Artist-in-Residence at SUNY Ulster, where she teaches improvisation, and is also on the faculty of Primary Stages. She has lived in New York City and Los Angeles and currently resides in the Hudson Valley with her wife, Barbara Smiley, whom she married approximately a year and a half before publicly discussing the relationship in an August 2020 interview with Vulture, in which she stated that she is gay.