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- Overview
- Early life
- Film and stage career
- Personal life
Sandy Dennis (born April 27, 1937, Hastings, Nebraska, U.S.—died March 2, 1992, Westport, Connecticut) was an American actress who was alternately praised and criticized for her quirky mannerisms, which became a hallmark of a career that included an Academy Award-winning performance as best supporting actress as the mousy and nervous faculty wife i...
The daughter of Jack Dennis, a salesman for a bakery and a railway clerk, and Yvonne (née Hudson) Dennis, Sandy Dennis grew up in Kenesaw and Lincoln, Nebraska. As early as elementary school, she began acting in and directing plays and skits. Dennis continued acting during high school and at the Lincoln Community Theater. After brief stints as a student at Nebraska Wesleyan University and the University of Nebraska, she moved to New York City at age 19 to pursue acting professionally. In New York she studied acting with Lee Grant and Herbert Berghof at HB Studio.
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Dennis hit her stride during the 1960s, making her film debut in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and then winning Tony Awards for her Broadway roles as a social worker in A Thousand Clowns in 1963 and as the unconventional mistress of a tycoon in Any Wednesday in 1964. As the wife of the young college professor played by George Segal, she more than holds her own with Hollywood heavyweights Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the emotional slug fest that is Mike Nichols’s 1966 film version of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Her memorable performance earned her an Oscar for best supporting actress. She also gained critical acclaim for her convincing performance as an idealistic schoolteacher recruited to a tough New York City school in the film Up the Down Staircase (1967), winning the Moscow International Film Festival prize for best actress.
Dennis’s screen roles were mostly solemn ones, including the unstable women she portrayed in two Robert Altman films: That Cold Day in the Park (1969) and Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982). In Sweet November (1968), Dennis starred as a woman dying from an incurable disease, and in The Four Seasons (1981), she played a woman whose husband betrays her for a younger lover. She was at her comedic best opposite Jack Lemmon in Neil Simon’s dark urban comedy The Out-of-Towners (1970).
Dennis lived for a time with jazz musician Gerry Mulligan. Later she was romantically involved with actor Eric Roberts. She died at the age of 54 after a battle with cancer.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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5′ 2″ (1.57 m) Mini Bio. It would not be easy for anyone to out-do one of American theater's finest thespians, but somehow actress Sandy Dennis managed to even out-quirk the legendary Geraldine Page when it came to affecting nervous tics and offbeat mannerisms on stage and in film.
- April 27, 1937
- March 2, 1992
Mar 2, 1992 · Sandra Dale "Sandy" Dennis (April 27, 1937 – March 2, 1992) was an American actress. She made her film debut in the drama Splendor in the Grass (1961). For her performance in the comedy-drama film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
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