Dianne Wiest Movies and Career Information

Dianne Wiest (born March 28, 1948) is an American actress. She has had a successful career on stage, television, and film, and has won two Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award. Wiest has also been nominated for a BAFTA Award. Wiest was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Her father was a college dean and former psychiatric social worker for the U.S. Army, and her Scottish-born mother, Anne, worked as a nurse; her parents met in Algiers. She has two brothers: Greg and Don Wiest. Wiest's original ambition was to be a ballerina, but in late high school she switched her goal to theatre. Wiest graduated from the University of Maryland in 1969 with a degree in Arts and Sciences. She made her film debut in It's My Turn (1980), but did not establish herself as a film actress until her work for Woody Allen in the 1980s. Wiest studied theatre at the University of Maryland, leaving after her third term 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 Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, CT, playing the title role in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. She was an understudy both off-Broadway and on