Dana Delany Biography

Birth Name : Dana Welles Delany 

Date of Birth : 13 March 1956, New York City, New York, USA 

Height : 5' 5¾" (1.67 m) 

Occupation : Actress, producer

Dana Welles Delany was born on March 13, 1956, in New York City and raised in Stamford, Connecticut. Dana knew early in life that she wanted to be an actress. Following graduation from Wesleyan University, this tall (5'7") beauty moved to New York and developed her skills working in daytime television and theater. Dana starred in the Broadway show "A Life" and received critical acclaim in a number of off-Broadway productions as well. Her role in Nicholas Kazan's controversial "Bloodmoon" in New York led her to Hollywood. Dana acted in a number of TV series, working steadily until she could get her own starring vehicle. That happened in 1988 when Dana became identified with Army nurse Colleen McMurphy in ABC TV's critically acclaimed series "China Beach" (1988), the role earning her three Emmy nominations and two Emmy Awards as Best Actress.

More voiceover work followed with the animated series “Batman: The Animated Series” (Fox, 1992-95), and Delany cemented her image as a movie-of-the-week heroine by starring as a Texas suffragette in the Western miniseries, "True Women" (CBS, 1997), and as one-half of a Dutch farm couple who harbor Jews during WWII in the 1998 Showtime original, "Rescuers: Stories of Courage: Two Couples." Mixing things up with a family comedy and an edge-of-your-seat thriller, Delany had supporting big screen roles in “Wide Awake” (1998) and “Curve” (1998) before stepping into Ellen Burstyn's Oscar-nominated role as a car crash survivor who develops healing powers in a TV remake of "Resurrection" (ABC, 1999). She returned to the stage in the Pulitzer-winning off-Broadway play "Dinner with Friends" in 2000, while a guest turn on an episode of CBS' "Family Law" (CBS, 1999-2002) netted Delany another Emmy nomination. In the fall of 2001, she returned to regular series work with a leading role as a society heiress on Fox’s soapy serial, "Pasadena” (Fox, 2001), which paired her again with her “Rescuers” on-screen husband, Martin Donovan.

Guest appearances on “Boston Legal” (ABC, 2004-08), “Kojak” (USA, 2005) and “Related” (WB, 2005-06), led to Delany’s casting on the NBC crime drama “Kidnapped” (2006-07), where she and Timothy Hutton played the wealthy parents of a kidnapped teen who join forces with a former FBI agent to find their son. She soldiered on after that failed outing to finally find some stability on an acclaimed and long-running series, following up her role as a U.S. senator on “The L Word” (Showtime, 2004-09) by becoming an additional cast member on the top-rated campy serial, “Desperate Housewives.” As Katherine Mayfair, a former resident of Wisteria Lane who moves back to the suburban neighborhood with a mysterious secret about her absence and her family, Delany proved an invigorating sparring partner with uber-perfect neighbor Bree Van de Camp (Marcia Cross).