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Jenny O'Hara

Before going to New York to study with Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner, Jenny O'Hara spent a year at Carnegie Tech and a summer playing in stock theater. In the 1960s, she toured with Lotte Lenya in Brecht on Brecht and appeared on Broadway in the dramatic play Dylan, opposite Alec Guinness, and in the short-lived musical The Fig Leaves Are Falling, with Dorothy Loudon, as well as in several off-Broadway plays.

In 1970, O'Hara succeeded her younger sister, Jill (who had been nominated for a Tony Award), in the musical Promises, Promises. She followed that with Robert Coover's The Kid and Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, and returned to Broadway in 1985 in The Odd Couple (Female Version). By the mid-'70s, O'Hara's mother, Edith O'Hara, was running the 13th Street Repertory Company in Greenwich Village (a major venue for off-off- Broadway and children's theater), and her brother, Jack, was in London playing guitar and bass and singing with the band Eggs Over Easy, which pioneered the pub rock scene in England.

Meanwhile, O'Hara graduated to television, both in series and made-for-television features, including starring roles in Brinks: The Great Robbery, The Return of the World's Greatest Detective, Blind Ambition and Blinded by the Light.

She later appeared in movies including Career Opportunities, Angie, Wishmaster, Mystic River, Matchstick Men, Forty Shades of Blue, Two Weeks, Hit List and Extract and in television series including The Facts of Life, My Sister Sam, Law & Order, Beverly Hills, 90210, NYPD Blue, ER, House M.D., Reba, The Closer, Nip/Tuck, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Cold Case, Six Feet Under, Grey's Anatomy, Big Love, Drop Dead Diva and The King of Queens, in which she played Doug Heffernan's (Kevin James) mother, Janet Heffernan.


Note: This profile was written in or before 2011.

Jenny O'Hara Facts

OccupationActress
BirthdayFebruary 24, 1946 (78)
SignPisces
BirthplaceSonora, California, USA

Selected Filmography

Sassy Pants
Orange County
The Sacred
Devil
BFFs
Career Opportunities
The Facts of Life
The Truth About Jane
Right At Your Door
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