Dana Ivey
By Deborah Baudoin

Reciting Dana Ivey's list of credits is sort of like reciting of Who's Who of American stage, film, and television.

She's held her own with stars like Rex Harrison, George C. Scott, Lauren Bacall, Rosemary Harris, Morgan Freeman, Kate Burton, Robert Klein, Nathan Lane, Whoopi Goldberg, Kevin Kline, Oprah Winfrey, Harrison Ford, Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis, Oliver Platt, Ashley Judd, Hugh Grant, Cherry Jones, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Kathleen Turner, Steve Buscemi, Sally Field, Roger Rees, Loni Anderson, Jude Law, Sandra Bullock, Steve Martin, Michael Caine, Celia Weston, David Warner, Christine Lahti, and Eddie Izzard.

She's been in such popular movies as Sleepless in Seattle Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde and Rush Hour 3 as well as critically acclaimed television shows like Oz, Sex and the City, Monk, and Homicide: Life on the Street. Hers may not be a household name, but her face is highly recognizable—considering she's made a habit of stealing scenes in movies wherever she goes. The question "Who is Dana Ivey?" is quickly and efficiently answered by pointing to her performances in movies such as The Color Purple, Sabrina, and The Addams Family. It's hard to forget the woman who stole Cousin Itt's heart.

But to focus on only her filmed performances is to overlook the essence of Dana Ivey's long and distinguished career—her impressive body of stage credits, on and Off-Broadway, in regional theater, and in Canada and England. Equally at home with comedy and drama, Ms. Ivey's New York performances have included such diverse plays as Hamlet, Sex and Longing, The Rivals, Henry IV, Mrs. Warren's Profession, Lil Abner, Blithe Spirit, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, and The Last Night of Ballyhoo. She has been nominated for five Tony Awards and has won the Drama Desk Award, three Obie Awards (Quartermaine's Terms, Driving Miss Daisy, Mrs. Warren's Profession), the Outer Critics Award, the Clarence Derwent Award for Promising Newcomer (Quartermaine's Terms, Present Laughter), the St. Clair Bayfield Award (Hamlet), and the Richard Seff Award.

She has performed in classic works by such playwrights as William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Sheridan, Tennessee Williams, and Noel Coward, as well as new plays by Stephen Sondheim, Christopher Durang, Simon Gray, Hugh Whitemore, and Alfred Uhry. Off-Broadway, Ms. Ivey originated the part of Daisy Werthan in Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy (a part later played by Ivey’s mother in Atlanta, in a production that took her to Shanghai and Moscow.)

Although she's made a career of playing tough, often abrasive women, Dana Ivey herself is a charming, intelligent, and engaging individual. Dana got her first acting gig in a local theatrical production at the age of six. She's been performing ever since.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, to physicist Hugh Ivey and speech therapist/actress Mary Nell Santacroce, Dana Ivey had what she described as "very liberal" upbringing in Atlanta. Her mother was "the queen of University of Georgia theatre," described by director John Huston as "one of the three or four greatest actresses in the world." Her grandmother knew Margaret Mitchell, and Ms. Santacroce auditioned for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in the movie. Her parents divorced when she was young—an unusual thing in 1950s Atlanta, and her mother remarried architect Dante Santacroce. She has one brother and one half-brother. She was raised Unitarian and is a life-long Theosophist. She is also a lacto-ovo vegetarian.

After graduating from Rollins College in Florida, she headed to London on a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Regional performances across America and Canada followed, as well as a brief career detour into teaching and a stint as a classical music disk jockey, before she relocated to New York City in the late 1970s.

For five years, according to Ms. Ivey, she "couldn't get arrested" in New York. When success came, however, it was fast and furious. The early 1980s brought her roles in Noel Coward's Present Laughter and in Simon Gray's Quartemaine's Terms, for which she received the Clarence Derwent Award as Most Promising Newcomer to the New York Theatre. She was nominated for two Tony Awards in the same season in 1984 for her featured performances in George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House and Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George.

Around that time, Dana Ivey switched coasts to costar in the short-lived Loni Anderson sitcom, Easy Street, along with James Cromwell. Roles in movies came as well—Explorers, The Color Purple, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

She then returned to New York for good, establishing herself as a name in films, on television, and on the stage. She is recognized for her intelligent approach to acting, her verbal dexterity, and her ability to really understand the parts she is playing. According to playwright Alfred Uhry, she is not afraid to ask why a line is there. "And you’ve got to be able to defend it, too," Uhry said in a 2004 New York Sun article. "She’s not going to be nice because she’s my friend."

She has a love of language, reveling in tongue-twisting parts like Sheridan’s Mrs. Malaprop and in the biting wit of Shaw and Coward. A voracious reader, Ms. Ivey lends her powerful voice to numerous Books on Tape productions and is frequently a guest reader at the New York Public Library. She also has a deep love of history, especially the English Restoration period and Ancient Egypt. She’s made several trips to Egypt, as well as Iran, Sri Lanka, and other points exotic. A self-proclaimed "stage bunny," Ms. Ivey’s is a well-known face at theatrical performances both on and Off-Broadway.

Well-read, well-educated, and well-spoken, Dana Ivey brings an articulate intelligence to any role she plays, imbuing even the most superficially brusque characters with depth, pathos and, quite often, sympathy.