Terry Finn

Teresa Jo Ann Bernadette Finn, known professionally as Terry Finn, was born on August 6, 1955, in Long Island City, New York, the fifth child of Katherine Finn, an elementary school teacher, and Peter David Finn, a New York City firefighter assigned to a Brooklyn station. Finn grew up on Long Island, attending St. Pius X Elementary School in Plainview, where she made her stage debut at age eleven in the leading role of Flora in The Innocents with the Pius Players. Her secondary education took place at Queen of the Rosary Academy in Amityville, where she initially prepared for a career in teaching.

Finn enrolled at Iona College in New Rochelle as a psychology major before an impromptu audition for Professor Roderick Nash led her to switch her concentration to Communication Arts in the Theatre Department. As a member of the Iona Players, she took on leading roles including Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire and Sally Bowles in Cabaret. After graduating, she returned to Iona for a post-graduate summer session and was cast as Maria in West Side Story, her third Stephen Sondheim musical following roles as Marta in Company and Young Dolly in Follies.

Finn made her Broadway debut at the Morosco Theatre in Hugh Leonard's A Life, serving as understudy to Dana Delany. Her Broadway career spans 1980 to 1981, during which she appeared in both A Life and Merrily We Roll Along. Casting director Joanna Merlin selected Finn to originate the role of Gussie Carnegie in Merrily We Roll Along, the Sondheim and Hal Prince musical with a book by George Furth. The production ran for 52 previews and 16 performances at the Alvin Theatre before closing. Among the reviews it received, Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Post that Finn provided "a beautifully acrid comic skit" as a producer's wife, and Douglas Watt noted in the New York Daily News that she delivered "gushingly imperious" work alongside Jason Alexander. The day after the show closed, on November 29, 1981, the cast assembled at RCA Records Studio A to record the original cast album.

In 2002, director Lonny Price organized a reunion concert at La Guardia Concert Hall in Lincoln Center, held on September 30 of that year. Finn had been difficult to locate, a search chronicled in a Broadway.com article titled "Finding Finn." Price stated that Finn was dazzling in the role and that he could not imagine staging the reunion without her. The one-night benefit raised more than $200,000 for Musical Theatre Works. Reviewers at Playbill.com observed that the inclusion of lesser-known songs expanded Gussie's presence considerably, noting that Finn is barely present on the original cast album. Finn also appears in Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, a 2016 documentary directed by Lonny Price examining the history of the production and the subsequent lives of its cast members.

Off Broadway, Finn played Pearl Gordon in Clifford Odets's Paradise Lost at The Mirror Repertory Company under director John Strasberg, Kate Poplin in Big Maggie at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre, and Audrey in William Shakespeare's As You Like It with the New York Acting Unit. In regional theatre, she starred as Constanze Weber-Mozart in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus at The Wells Theatre with The Virginia Stage Company.

Finn's screen work spans television, film, and daytime soap operas. Her television credits include the role of Margie Moran in Seeds of Tragedy for Fox Television Network, a starring role in The Disappearance of Nora for CBS, and Shadow of Obsession on NBC. She guest starred as Mrs. Kitty Conley in an episode of Trial By Jury titled "Psychic Vision," starring Raymond Burr, produced by Dick Clark Productions, directed by Marty Passeta Jr., and broadcast on September 15, 1989. Her film debut came in Orion Pictures' Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey in 1991, followed by the 1993 Hollywood Pictures and Nintendo production Super Mario Bros. Bob Hoskins, a star of Super Mario Bros., subsequently invited Finn to take the leading role of Jackie Bailey in his 1995 fantasy film Rainbow, in which Hoskins played Frank Bailey, Jackie's father-in-law. She appeared as the Birthday Mom in Hollywood Pictures' Terminal Velocity in 1994, and reunited with Hoskins in Den of Lions in 2003.

Finn married motion picture production designer David L. Snyder on August 1, 1990, on Central Park West in New York City. The two had first met in January 1989 at the former offices of George Harrison's Handmade Films in Los Angeles, where they later renewed their vows in 2005. Their son, Finn Henry Snyder, was born on October 2, 1997, in Beverly Hills, California.