Dyan Cannon

She was born Samille Diane Friesen in Tacoma, Washington. The daughter of housewife Claire (née Portnoy) and life insurance salesman Ben Friesen. Her younger brother is jazz musician David Friesen. Her high school nickname was "Frosty". She made her film debut in 1960 in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond; she had appeared on television since the late 1950s, including a guest appearance on Bat Masterson. She appeared in 1959 on CBS's Wanted: Dead or Alive, in episode 52, "Vanishing Act", as Nicole McCready. About this time, she was on the CBS western Johnny Ringo, starring Don Durant, and on Jack Lord's western Stoney Burke on ABC. She also appeared on Hawaiian Eye, using her name Diane Cannon, in 1961, opposite Robert Conrad, and Connie Stevens. She got her stage name from producer Jerry Wald who said he kept seeing something explosive in her. In 1963, Cannon joined the national touring production of the Broadway musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, in which she played Rosemary. Cannon's first major film role came in 1969's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. She was extremely nervous about doing the famous bedroom scene in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. She claimed all four participants were a wreck. Elliott Gould busily stuffed food in his mouth; Robert Culp talked a mile a minute and Natalie Wood would not even come out of her trailer at first. In 1971 she starred in five films: The Love Machine, Doctors' Wives, The Anderson Tapes with Sean Connery, The Burglars and Such Good Friends, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. {on working with director Otto Preminger on Such Good Friends, she said} "I was warned about him -- but could anybody really be that bad? Yeah, they could. Elaine May wrote a great screenplay. He took a piece of beauty and screwed it up. It was an incredible part and he destroyed it. I have been the victim of some killers in my time. He's one of the biggest. He's a horrible man. Phew! But whoever hears of him anymore? Is he still alive?"

Cannon co-starred opposite Burt Reynolds in Shamus (1973). She was in The Last of Sheila (1973) she costarred alongside Richard Benjamin, James Coburn, Joan Hackett, James Mason, Ian McShane, and Raquel Welch. it was directed by Herbert Ross and written by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim. The film was released to positive reviews and has garnered a solid cult following over time. Rian Johnson credited the film as an inspiration for Knives Out (2019). She gave a critically acclaimed performance in Child Under a Leaf in 1974. She starred in the TV movie Virginia Hill with Harvey Keitel. Following this she took a four-year absence from acting. She became the first Oscar-nominated actress to be nominated in the Best Short Film, Live Action Category for Number One (1976), a project which Cannon produced, directed, wrote and edited. It was a story about adolescent sexual curiosity. She received her third Academy Award nomination for her comedic role as Julia Farnsworth, opposite Warren Beatty, in Heaven Can Wait (1978), for which she won the Golden Globe Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Later that year, she starred in another comedy hit, Revenge of the Pink Panther, opposite Peter Sellers and directed by Blake Edwards, and was named Female Star of the Year by NATO (National Association of Theater Owners). In 1976, she hosted Saturday Night Live during its first season and she guest starred in the fourth season of The Muppet Show in 1979. Her filmography is vast and includes TNT's remake of the Warner Bros.' Classic Christmas in Connecticut, directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Coast to Coast with Robert Blake, Author! Author! opposite Al Pacino; Deathtrap, co-starring Sir Michael Caine and Christopher Reeves and Honeysuckle Rose, in which she played Willie Nelson's wife and made her debut as a country music singer. Cannon wrote, directed, and starred in the semi-autobiographical film The End of Innocence, which costarred the ill-fated Rebecca Schaeffer as a younger version of Cannon's character. She has starred on Broadway and in her own musical stage act at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and Harrah's in Lake Tahoe. Dyan co-wrote the title song for Chaka Khan's album, The Woman I Am, with Brenda Russell.

In the 90's, she made appearances in the films That Darn Cat (1997) with Christina Ricci, 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997) with Joe Pesci, George Hamilton and David Spade and Out to Sea (1997) with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 2005, she appeared in Boynton Beach Club, a movie about aging Floridians who have just lost their spouses. Dyan has co-starred on two prime-time television shows. For several years, she brought her own brand of humor, class and sexiness to the role of Whipper Cone on the Emmy Award winning series Ally McBeal. She then starred as the vivacious and free-spirited Honey Bernstein-Flynn on NBC's short lived comedy series Three Sisters. She was in the 1984 Sidney Sheldon miniseries Master of the Game with Harry Hamlin. in 1993, she was in the cult TV movie Based on an Untrue Story with Morgan Fairchild, Ricki Lake and Harvey Korman and was also in the 1996 TV movie version of The Rockford Files starring James Garner. On July 22, 1965, Cannon married actor Cary Grant, who was 33 years her senior. They had one daughter, Jennifer (born February 26, 1966), who also is an actress. Grant and Cannon separated in August 1967. In March 1968, Grant was involved in a car accident while in the company of Baroness Gratia von Furstenberg, who was also injured. Nine days later, Cannon divorced Grant. In 1972, Cannon revealed that she engaged in primal therapy. Cannon married real estate investor Stanley Fimberg in 1985. They divorced in 1991. Her memoir Dear Cary was on the New York Times best seller list three different times spanning four years. She is the National Spokesperson for the Hemangioma Treatment Foundation, an organization that provides treatment to children all over the world who are afflicted with vascular birthmarks. She has also been National Spokesperson for Martin Colette's Wildlife Waystation, an international refuge that rescues and rehabilitates wild and exotic animals as well as National spokesperson for Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America. She recently came in fifth (behind Sophia Loren, Goldie Hawn, Ann-Margret and Raquel Welch) in the "Sexiest Older Actress" category held by the website Third Age. She is considered the second-most-famous Laker fan behind Jack Nicholson.