Jodi Long

Jodi Long is an American actress born on January 7, 1954, in Manhattan and raised in Queens, New York. She has worked across Broadway, film, and television over a career spanning more than six decades.

Long comes from a family with deep roots in performance. Her father, Lawrence K. Long, performed under the stage name Larry Leung and was of mixed Cantonese and Scottish descent. He began his career on Australia's vaudeville circuit before immigrating to the United States, where he performed as part of a duo called the Wing Brothers in San Francisco and later pursued careers as a tap dancer and PGA golf professional. Her mother, Kimiye "Trudie" Long, née Tsunemitsu, was born in Portland, Oregon, to Japanese immigrant parents. During World War II, despite her brother's service in the U.S. Military, the Tsunemitsu family was relocated to the Minidoka Internment Camp in Idaho, where Trudie lived for one year before moving to New York City, where she worked at the American Bible Society and danced at The China Doll nightclub. On May 7, 1950, Long's parents appeared together on The Ed Sullivan Show as the singing, dancing, and comedy act Larry and Trudie Leung. Long later wrote a documentary about her parents, Long Story Short, directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Christine Choy, which received the Grand Jury Honorable Mention for a Documentary and the Audience Award at the 2008 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Her parents divorced during her childhood.

Long attended Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts and earned a BFA in drama from the State University of New York at Purchase in 1976. She began her stage career as a child, appearing in a Sidney Lumet-directed Broadway production of Nowhere to Go But Up in 1962. She returned to Broadway in 1979 playing Selina in Loose Ends, followed by The Bacchae in 1980, both staged at the Circle in the Square Theatre. In 1996, she appeared on Broadway as Nam-Jun Vuong in Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's comedy thriller Getting Away with Murder. The 2002 Broadway revival of Flower Drum Song brought Long back to the stage once more; her performance during the Los Angeles tryout earned her an Ovation Award.

Long made her feature film debut in Alan J. Pakula's thriller Rollover in 1981. She appeared in Splash in 1984 and The Bedroom Window in 1987 before being cast as Wendy Yoshimura, a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, in Paul Schrader's biographical thriller Patty Hearst in 1988. That same year she starred in Mike Newell's Soursweet and toured internationally performing the role of M in the drama 1000 Airplanes on the Roof. She also makes a cameo appearance in the 1986 New Order music video for "Bizarre Love Triangle," arguing with E. Max Frye about reincarnation. Subsequent film roles included The Exorcist III in 1990, RoboCop 3 and Striking Distance in 1993, The Hot Chick in 2003, and Mike Mills' Beginners in 2010. In 2018, she appeared in a supporting role in HBO Films' drama The Tale, starring Laura Dern, Ellen Burstyn, and Jason Ritter, and in 2021 she had a role in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

On television, Long is recognized for her recurring roles as Madame Ybarra on Café Americain from 1993 to 1994, Mrs. Kim on the Margaret Cho sitcom All-American Girl from 1994 to 1995, and Ok Cha on the TBS series Sullivan & Son from 2012 until its cancellation on November 20, 2014. She also played a therapist in Desperate Housewives and a character named Patty in Sex and the City. In 2020, Long won the Daytime Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the Netflix series Dash & Lily. Following that recognition, she played Madame Armfeldt in the 2023 revival of A Little Night Music at the Pasadena Playhouse, and in early 2026 starred in the play Chinese Republicans for the Roundabout Theatre Company.