Liz Sheridan

Elizabeth Ann Sheridan was born on April 10, 1929, in Rye, New York, to Frank Sheridan, a classical pianist, and Elizabeth Poole-Jones, a concert singer. Following her parents' separation, she was raised by her mother in Westchester County. Her sister's childhood mispronunciation of "Elizabeth" as "Dizabeth" gave rise to the nickname "Dizzy," which stayed with her throughout her life.

Sheridan launched her professional career as a nightclub dancer and singer in the 1950s, spending much of that decade living and working in the Caribbean. In St. Thomas, she choreographed and won a dance contest at the first Carnival held there, and she later earned a $600 purse winning a horse race on her stallion, Generalé. She supported herself in St. Thomas and Puerto Rico by dancing, singing, and playing piano. Returning to New York City in the late 1960s, she performed in one of Julius Monk's annual cabaret revues at Plaza 9 in the Plaza Hotel before transitioning to stage work.

Her Broadway career spanned from 1971 to 1979 and included productions such as Something's Afoot, Best Friend, Happy End, Ballroom, and Once a Catholic. The 1977 musical Happy End featured Sheridan alongside Meryl Streep and Christopher Lloyd. After her Broadway years, she relocated to Los Angeles, where she built a substantial screen career encompassing supporting roles in more than a dozen feature films and over sixty prime-time network television movies, miniseries, and series, among them Kojak, Archie Bunker's Place, St. Elsewhere, Newhart, Moonlighting, The A-Team, Who's the Boss, Hill Street Blues, Cagney and Lacey, Family Ties, Murder She Wrote, and Double Rush.

Her first major television role came when she was cast as the nosy neighbor Raquel Ochmonek on the NBC sitcom ALF, a part she held from 1986 to 1990. She subsequently joined the cast of Seinfeld, playing Helen, Jerry's protective, Florida-based mother, across all nine seasons from 1990 to 1998. She was the only performer beyond the four principal leads to appear in every season of the series and was the last surviving actress to have played a parent of one of the show's main characters. In 2009, she co-starred with Andy Griffith and Doris Roberts in the romantic comedy film Play the Game, which drew attention for a sex scene between Sheridan and Griffith.

During her early years as a nightclub dancer in New York City, Sheridan met the then-unknown James Dean, and the two entered into a romantic relationship. She later chronicled their time together in her 2000 book, Dizzy and Jimmy: My Life with James Dean: A Love Story, published by HarperEntertainment, describing them as each other's first romantic love. Their relationship ended as Dean's career began pulling him toward Hollywood. The two encountered each other once more at a New York City party before Sheridan returned to the Caribbean, and that meeting proved to be the last time she saw him.

In Puerto Rico, Sheridan met jazz musician William Dale Wales, born in 1917. The two shared their lives from 1960 until his death in 2003, marrying in 1985. Their daughter, Stephanie, became a photographer. Sheridan and actress Elizabeth Montgomery maintained a close friendship, known to those around them as Dizzy and Lizzie; the two shared a love of horses and regularly attended the Santa Anita race track together.

Sheridan died on April 15, 2022, at the age of 93.