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Dana Delany

Dana Delany made her mark as Army nurse Colleen McMurphy on ABC's critically-acclaimed series China Beach, for which she received two Emmy Awards and four nominations for Best Dramatic Actress.

Following graduation from Wesleyan University, Delany, a Stamford, Connecticut native, went to New York, where she honed her skills in daytime television and theatre. She starred on Broadway in A Life and received critical acclaim in a number of off-Broadway productions, including Nicholas Kazan's Blood Moon, which led to her arrival in Los Angeles for the west coast production of the controversial drama. Opting to stay in Los Angeles after the run of the play, Delany was soon cast in popular television shows, including Moonlighting and Magnum, P.I.

Delany's film credits include Tombstone, Housesitter, Fly Away Home, Exit to Eden, Light Sleeper, Moon Over Parador, Masquerade, Patty Hearst, Where the River Runs Black, Almost You, Route 30, A Beautiful Life, Multiple Sarcasms and Camp Hope. She recently completed production on the independent feature Freelancers, starring Robert DeNiro, Forest Whitaker and Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson.

For three seasons Delany portrayed Katherine Mayfair on the acclaimed ABC series Desperate Housewives. Two seasons ago, she was featured in a two-part episode arc on ABC's Castle, where she portrayed Special Agent Jordan Shaw, an FBI profiler assigned to help catch a serial killer. Other television credits include Presidio Med, Pasadena and Kidnapped, opposite Timothy Hutton. Episodic work includes Family Law, for which she received an Emmy Award nomination for outstanding guest actress in a drama series. Television miniseries include Shake, Rattle & Roll, True Women and Wild Palms. Some of the movies for television in which Delany has starred include Resurrection and The Patron Saint of Liars, both directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal; For Hope, in which she played a woman suffering from Scleroderma, directed by Bob Saget; Lifetime's Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story; Sirens; Rescuers: Stories of Courage, and Conviction, with Omar Epps; and The Right Temptation. Delany produced and starred in the ABC telefilm Final Jeopardy, based on New York sex-crimes prosecutor Linda Fairstein's novel.

Theatre credits include Translations, Much Ado About Nothing, opposite Billy Campbell at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, and the Pulitzer prize-winning play Dinner with Friends, alternating roles in New York, Los Angeles and Boston. Last year she appeared in Neil Labute's Things We Said Today at the EST marathon in New York. Since 1996 Delany has provided voice-over work as Lois Lane on the WB's animated series Superman, The Batman/Superman Adventures, Justice League and, most recently, Batman.

Since the mid-1990s, Delany has served on the board of the Scleroderma Research Foundation, and also actively supports the Stand Up 2 Cancer and NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundations.


Note: This profile was written in or before 2011.
Read earlier biographies on this page.

Dana Delany Facts

Birth NameDana Welles Delany
OccupationActress
BirthdayMarch 13, 1956 (68)
SignPisces
BirthplaceNew York, New York, USA
Height5' 7" (1m70)  How tall is Dana Delany compared to you?
Social Media DanaDelany

Selected Filmography

Gathering Dust
Tombstone
The Enemy Within
Batman: Mask of Phantasm
Housesitter
Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox
Fly Away Home
Exit to Eden
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