1956-03-13 · New York, U.S. · Female
Dana Delany (born March 13, 1956) is an American actress. After appearing in small roles early in her career, Delany received her breakthrough role as Colleen McMurphy on the ABC television drama China Beach (1988–1991), for which she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1989 and 1992. She received further recognition for her appearances in the films Light Sleeper (1992), Tombstone (1993), Exit to Eden (1994), The Margaret Sanger Story (1995), Fly Away Home (1996), True Women (1997), and Wide Awake (1998). Delany also provided the voice of Lois Lane in Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Delany has the longest tenure of playing Lois Lane, having portrayed the character intermittently over a span of 17 years.
In the 2000s, Delany appeared in main roles on several short-lived television series, including Pasadena (2001), Presidio Med (2002–2003), and Kidnapped (2006–2007). From 2007 to 2010, she starred as Katherine Mayfair on the ABC television series Desperate Housewives, for which she received a Prism Award in 2009. Delany then starred as Megan Hunt on the ABC medical drama Body of Proof (2011–2013), and as Crystal Harris on the Amazon Prime Video drama series Hand of God (2014–2017).
Early life
Delany was born in New York City, the daughter of interior designer Mary Burnett Welles and John Joseph Delany, CEO of Coyne & Delany Co., a plumbing manufacturing firm. She has a sister, Corey, and a brother, Sean. She was raised Roman Catholic. She has stated that, even as a little girl, she always wanted to go into acting. "The reason a person first gets into acting is because you want attention from your parents as a little girl", she told a reporter. In her childhood, she went with her family to many Broadway shows and was fascinated by films.
After growing up in Stamford, Connecticut, she attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, for her senior year and was a member of the school's first co-educational class. Then-senior Delany wrote an op-ed in 1974 about her experience of being a one-year student during the school's first semesters of co-education. "Andover was the best time of my life", she recalled. She played the lead role of Nellie Forbush in the school's spring musical production of South Pacific opposite Peter Kapetan as Emile. She commented: "It was just a little awkward to be Nellie at first because she hesitates to marry Emile since he had once lived with a Polynesian woman – I don't agree with her reasoning so that made things a bit hard at the beginning". She appeared in a student video directed by classmate Jonathan Meath in a film class taught by Steve Marx. She graduated in 1974 with the academic honor of nomination to the school chapter of the Cum Laude Society, awarded that year to 80 out of 378 graduating seniors.
She majored in theater at Wesleyan University, where (among other productions) she appeared in one of the first performances of María Irene Fornés feminist play Fefu and Her Friends. Delany also worked summer stock productions during vacations before graduating in 1978. Later, in an interview, she reported that she sometimes had eating disorders during this time of her life. She said: "I binged... I starved... I was one step from anorexia – a piece of toast and an apple would be all I would eat in a day".
Career
1980s: Stage, television, China Beach
After college, she found acting work in New York City in daytime soap operas including Love of Life and As the World Turns, and supported herself by acting in commercials such as for Wisk laundry detergent. She starred in the Broadway show A Life and won critical acclaim in 1983 in Nicholas Kazan's off-Broadway Blood Moon, where The New York Times cited her "skillful verisimilitude" handling a difficult part requiring two roles "and she does them both with authority". Delany moved to Hollywood and during the next few years found work guest starring in TV shows like Moonlighting and Magnum, P.I. and Thirtysomething.
Delany's first audition for the lead role of nurse Colleen McMurphy was unsuccessful. "They thought I wasn't pretty enough", she said in an interview. She finally won the role when she showed up to her next audition with her "long tresses cut into a bob", after the producers lost their first choice (Delany had cut her hair at the request of director Paul Schrader, who had cast her in the film Patty Hearst). China Beach aired weekly from 1988 to 1991 and brought intense media attention to the actress. This role not only garnered two Primetime Emmy Awards, but two additional Primetime Emmy Award nominations and two Golden Globe Award nominations. The show ended after four seasons in 1991.
1990s: Movies, television, voice
In 1991, Delany was chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world. In the years following China Beach, Delany worked steadily in television, movies and theater. In addition, she established herself as a significant voice talent.
Delany won leading roles in a string of feature films such as the TV movie A Promise to Keep, Light Sleeper, Housesitter and Fly Away Home, as well as appearing in the TV mini-series Wild Palms. She also took on controversial roles, such as Mistress Lisa in Exit to Eden, where one film critic commented "The script was awful—Dana looked great".
On September 21, 1993, the CBS television film Donato and Daughter, directed by Rod Holcomb, premiered. In it Delany is paired with Charles Bronson to play the leads. Delany plays Bronson's daughter, both cops assigned to investigate a serial killer. Delany pointed to several reason to why she wanted to do the project. She said the story was appealing because "it was the relationship between the two that interested me. We see so many movies now about serial killers, it's really being overdone, so I wanted to emphasize the relationship between father and daughter". Also she liked that they were no romantic subplot by saying "why is it that in every movie, there has to be a male female thing going on? Why can't it be about a woman and her family and her work? That was the challenge because you want her to be strong and capable, but you also don't want her to be one-dimensional". Another reason she accepted is because she wanted to work with Charles Bronson. In Kay Gardella's review published in The Gazette she says "Delany and Bronson work well together. Bronson shows a warmer, more caring side than his usual tough-guy image allows. And Delany, as attractive as ever, is crisp and efficient as cop".
On December 25, Tombstone premiered in cinemas. She turned in her best known performance of the decade alongside Kurt Russell's Wyatt Earp, playing his love interest and future bride Josephine Marcus.
Now a box office draw in her own right, the stage was set for the success she would encounter later in her career. Live Nude Girls included frank discussion by women of their sexual fantasies at a bachelorette party using a low-budget improvisational comedy format with strong chemistry between the actors. Reviews were mixed: Los Angeles Times critic Richard Natale liked the film but wrote older male film executives believed it to be "uncommercial"; another critic agreed it was "genuine girl talk" but "didn't have a lot of substance" and viewers "don't get to know the characters in the film". She also starred as Margaret Sanger in the TV movie Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story (1995), about the controversial nurse who crusaded for women's reproductive rights in the early 1900s.
In 1995, Delany appeared in the Broadway show Translations and in May 1997, she returned to her alma mater Phillips Academy to work with theater students as an artist-in-residence. She appeared in TV movies such as True Women (1997) and Resurrection (1999). In 1998, Delany reportedly turned down the role of Carrie Bradshaw in the hit TV show Sex and the City. She…