Wiest's original ambition was to be a ballerina, but in late high school she switched her sights to acting in theatre. She made her film debut in 1980, but didn't make a name for herself until her performance as Emma, a prostitute during the Great  Depression, in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Under Allen's direction, Wiest won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). She followed her Academy Award success with performances in The Lost Boys (1987) and Bright Lights, Big City (1988) before starring with Steve Martin, Mary Steenburgen, Jason Robards, Keanu Reeves and Martha Plimpton in Ron Howard's Parenthood, for which she received her second Oscar nomination.
In 1990, Wiest starred in Edward Scissorhands. She returned to Woody Allen in 1994 for Bullets Over Broadway, a comedy set in 1920s New York City, winning her second Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Helen Sinclair, a boozy, glamorous, and neurotic star of the stage. She has recently appeared in the film Practical Magic (1998) and the television mini-series The 10th Kingdom (2000). From 2000 to 2002, Wiest portrayed District Attorney Nora Lewin in the long-running NBC crime drama Law & Order.
The Eldest child and only daughter of a Pilot and a nurse. Dianne Wiest was an "Army Brat" who grew up in several communities in the USA and Germany. While a teenager, she studied at the School of American Baller which she abandoned at age 16 in favor of the stage. Dopping out of college, Wiest became a member of a touring Shakespeare company and eventually landed a four-year gig as a memmber of the Arena Stage in Washington, DC. bY the mid 70`s the actress had settled in NYC and quickly found employement in production at the New York Shakespeare Festival`s Public Theatere. Wiest broke through with a multiple award-winning comic turn in the Off-Broadway play The Art of Diming in 1979. Despite the lure of film work, she has constantly returned to the stage, often in dramatic fare such as playing Desdemona to James Earl Jones`Othello(1982) and Maggie to Frank Langella`Quentin in After the Fall 1984 or a Holocaust survivor in Blue Light 1994 or its revision The Shawl 1996 and almost always to unanimious praise.
In a Handful of small screen productions, Wiest turned in fine work, including her moving depiction of a rape survivor on The Face of Rage ABC, 1983.
By this time, she had begun making in-roads joining Woody Allen`s unofficial stock company for her profile to rise.
In The Purple Rose of Caori 1985, the writer-director cast her in the small but memorable role of a hard-bitten prostitute. Wiest picked up her first Academy Award for her scene-stealing turn as Mia Farrow`s younger sister, a neurotically unfocused, superficially trendy wannabe actress, in Hannah and her Sisters 1986. In Allen`s turgid September 1987, she again stood out as an unhappily married woman competing with her best friend(Farrow) for the attentions of the same man (Sam Waterston).
It is doubtful that another actress could have telegraphed the character`s sexual desire mixed with apprehesion that Wiest so convinvingly manifests.
Her work with Allen was interrupted by a motherhood- both on screen ad off (The Actress has two adopted daughters)
After the Oscar win, Hollywood cast her in a string og maternal roles. You name it, she played it: from the clueless mom of a budding vampire in The Lost Boys 1987 to the sainted Madonna of Bright Light, Big City 1988 to the ditsy Avon Lady of Edward Scissorhands 1990. Ron Howards`s Parenthood 1989 netted Wiest a second Academy Award nomination for playing the harried, divorced parent of teenager.
In the span of some seven years, only Little Man Tate 1991 offered a very slight change of pace, casting her as a caring child psychologist in conflict with the mother of boy  genius.
It was Woody Allen who again provided a meaty a decidedly different character, the flamboyant tempestuous aging actress Helen Sinclair in Buller Over Broadway 1994.
At first, Wiest struggled with the role and after the first dailies, offered to quit as she felt miscast. Finally, the actress was able to unlock the character by locating a distinctive vocal inflection. Using her "stage voice", a bit deeper, more sensual, in Allen's words "more pretentious", she was able to inhabit the skin of this oversized, slightly campy grande dame and again all but stole the film. Critics and audiences embraced the character, and her exhortation "Don't speak!" and Wiest amassed yet another set of trophies, including a second Oscar.
Mike Nichols paired her with Gene Hackman as the conservative parents of a daughter marrying into an unconventional family in The Birdcage (1996). She added an Emmy to her collection for a 1996 guest appearance on Avonlea (The Disney Channel) before Robert Redford tapped into her beaming maternalism for The Horse Whisperer (1998). But the actress seemed to stumble a bit in her over-the-top interpretation of an eccentric training her nieces in witchcraft in Practical Magic (also 1998). Wiest picked up an Emmy nomination for a supporting role as a diner owner and friend to a seemingly ageless carpenter in The Secret Life of Noah Dearborn (CBS, 1999). The actress then was tapped to play a wicked queen who plots to usurp the throne of mythical monarchy in the lavish, big-budgeted TV mini-series The 10th Kingdom (NBC, 2000). A return to the big screen found Wiest playing the agoraphobic neighbor of a mentally retarded man (Sean Penn) fighting for custody of his seven year-old daughter in I Am Sam (2002). In Merci Docteur Rey (2004), she played the opera diva mother of a gay man (Stanislas Merhar) who doesn’t know her son is gay, the farcical comedy barely made a blip on the box office radar. Meanwhile, Wiest was the voice of Mrs. Copperbottom in Robots (2005), a well-reviewed animated feature that depicted a world entirely inhabited by mechanical beings.
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| Dianne Wiest IMDB.com |
