Dianne Wiest

Early life

Wiest was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Her mother, Anne Stewart (née Keddie), was a nurse. Her father, Bernard John Wiest, was a college dean and former psychiatric social worker for the U.S. Army. Her parents met in Algiers. Wiest has two brothers, Greg and Don. She attended high school at Nurnberg American High School in Germany. Her ambition was to be a ballet dancer, but she switched her goal to theater during her senior year. Wiest graduated from the University of Maryland in 1969 with a degree in Arts and Sciences.

Career

Stage

Wiest left her theater studies in Maryland after the third term in order to tour with a Shakespearean troupe. Later, she had a supporting role in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of Ashes. She also acted at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, playing the title role in Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. She was an understudy both off-Broadway and on Broadway, in Kurt Vonnegut's Happy Birthday, Wanda June in 1970.

She made her Broadway debut in Robert Anderson's Solitaire/Double Solitaire, taking over in the role of the daughter in 1971. She landed a four-year job as a member of the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., in such roles as Emily in Our Town, Honey in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and leading roles in S. Ansky's The Dybbuk, Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths and George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House. She toured the USSR with the Arena Stage. In 1976, Wiest attended the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and starred in leading roles in Amlin Gray's Pirates and Christopher Durang's A History of the American Film. At Joe Papp's Public Theater she took over the lead in Ashes, and played Cassandra in Agamemnon, directed by Andrei Șerban. In 1979, she originated the role of Agnes in Agnes of God in its first production in Waterford, Connecticut.

She appeared in two plays by Tina Howe: Museum and The Art of Dining. In the latter, Wiest's performance as the shy and awkward author Elizabeth Barrow Colt won three off-Broadway theater awards: an Obie Award (1980), a Theatre World Award (1979–1980) and the Clarence Derwent Award (1980), given yearly for the most promising performance in New York theatre.

On Broadway she appeared in Frankenstein (1981), directed by Tom Moore, portrayed Desdemona in Othello (1982) opposite James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer, and co-starred with John Lithgow in Christopher Durang's romantic screwball comedy Beyond Therapy (1982), directed by John Madden. and in Harold Pinter's A Kind of Alaska (1984, Manhattan Theatre Club), Lanford Wilson's Serenading Louie (1984), and Janusz Glowacki's Hunting Cockroaches (1987, Manhattan Theater Club). As Wiest became established as a film actress through her work in Woody Allen's films, she was less frequently available for stage roles. However, she did appear onstage during the 1990s, in In the Summer House, Square One, Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl, and Naomi Wallace's One Flea Spare. In 2003, she appeared with Al Pacino and Marisa Tomei in Oscar Wilde's Salome. In 2005, she starred in Kathleen Tolan's Memory House. She also starred in a production of Wendy Wasserstein's final play Third (directed by Daniel Sullivan) at Lincoln Center.

Later New York theater roles include performances as Arkadina in an off-Broadway revival of The Seagull (opposite Alan Cumming's Trigorin) and as Kate Keller in a Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons, opposite John Lithgow, Patrick Wilson and Katie Holmes. In 2009, Wiest appeared in the National Memorial Day Concert on the Mall in Washington, D.C. in a dialogue with Katie Holmes celebrating the life of an American veteran seriously wounded in Iraq, José Pequeño. Wiest spent September 2010 as a visiting teacher at Columbia University's Graduate Acting Program, working with a group of 18 first-year MFA Acting students on selected plays by Anton Chekhov and Arthur Miller.

In 2016, Wiest took on the role of "Winnie" in The Yale Repertory Theatre's production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. She reprised the role for Theatre for a New Audience in downtown Brooklyn, New York, in the spring of 2017, and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2019.

Film and television

Her early screen roles include small roles in It's My Turn (credited onscreen as Diane Wiest) and I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can, both starring Jill Clayburgh in the lead roles. In 1984, she starred in Footloose, as the reverend's wife and Ariel's mother. Under Woody Allen's direction, Wiest won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Hannah and Her Sisters in 1987 and Bullets Over Broadway in 1995. She also appeared in three other Woody Allen films: The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Radio Days (1987) and September (1987).

She followed her first Oscar success with performances in The Lost Boys (1987) and Bright Lights, Big City (1988). She also starred with Steve Martin, Mary Steenburgen, Jason Robards, Keanu Reeves and Martha Plimpton in Ron Howard's Parenthood, for which she received her second Oscar nomination. Other major film roles include Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990), Jodie Foster's Little Man Tate (1991) and The Birdcage (1996), Mike Nichols's remake of La Cage aux Folles.

On television, her performance on the series Road to Avonlea in 1997 brought her her first Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Dramatic Series. She received another nomination for her performance in the 1999 telefilm The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn, co-starring Sidney Poitier. She starred in the television mini-series The 10th Kingdom in 2000. From 2000 to 2002, Wiest portrayed interim District Attorney Nora Lewin in the NBC crime drama Law & Order. She also played the character in two episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and the pilot episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Wiest starred alongside Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche in Dan in Real Life (2007) and had a key supporting role in Charlie Kaufman's 2008 film Synecdoche, New York. In 2008, she also appeared as Gabriel Byrne's therapist, Gina Toll, on the HBO television series In Treatment, for which she received her second Emmy Award, for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. She received another nomination (in the same category) for the second season, in 2009, but did not win.

She starred alongside Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole (2010), whom she worked with on Practical Magic. Rabbit Hole debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival. Wiest also co-starred in Lawrence Kasdan's 2012 comedy Darling Companion, alongside Kevin Kline and Diane Keaton. In 2020, Wiest starred in Steven Soderbergh's drama Let Them All Talk alongside Meryl Streep and Candice Bergen. That same year she also starred opposite Rosamund Pike in the action thriller I Care a Lot.

Since 2021, she has starred in the Paramount+ crime thriller series Mayor of Kingstown, and in 2025 it was announced that she would be joining the cast of Only Murders in the Building as the grieving widow of doorman Lester, Lorraine.

Personal life

Wiest was in a relationship with her talent agent Sam Cohn for three years in the mid-1980s. She adopted two daughters: Emily and Lily.

Filmography

Film

Television

Stage

Awards and honors

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Dianne Wiest

Wiest has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress and received two wins for her performances in the Woody Allen films Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994). She has received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her work on television, winning two awards for Road to Avonlea (1996) and In Treatment (2008). She has also received two Golden Globe Award nominations and two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.

References

References

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