28 Facts About Dianne Wiest

1.

Dianne Wiest has won two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress for 1986's Hannah and Her Sisters and 1994's Bullets over Broadway, one Golden Globe Award for Bullets over Broadway, the 1997 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for Road to Avonlea, and the 2008 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for In Treatment.

2.

Dianne Wiest's mother, Anne Stewart, was a nurse.

3.

Dianne Wiest's father, Bernard John Wiest, was a college dean and former psychiatric social worker for the US Army.

4.

Dianne Wiest's ambition was to be a ballet dancer, but she switched her goal to theater in her senior year at Nurnberg American High School.

5.

Dianne Wiest graduated from the University of Maryland in 1969 with a degree in Arts and Sciences.

6.

Dianne Wiest left her theater studies in Maryland after the third term in order to tour with a Shakespearean troupe.

7.

Dianne Wiest acted at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, playing the title role in Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler.

8.

Dianne Wiest was an understudy both off-Broadway and on Broadway, in Kurt Vonnegut's Happy Birthday, Wanda June in 1970.

9.

In 1976, Dianne Wiest attended the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and starred in leading roles in Amlin Gray's Pirates and Christopher Durang's A History of the American Film.

10.

Dianne Wiest appeared in two plays by Tina Howe: Museum and The Art of Dining.

11.

Dianne Wiest starred in a production of Wendy Wasserstein's final play Third at Lincoln Center.

12.

In 2009, Dianne Wiest appeared in the National Memorial Day Concert on the Mall in Washington, DC in a dialogue with Katie Holmes celebrating the life of an American veteran seriously wounded in Iraq, Jose Pequeno.

13.

Dianne Wiest spent September 2010 as a visiting teacher at Columbia University's Graduate Acting Program, working with a group of 18 first-year MFA Acting students on selected plays by Anton Chekhov and Arthur Miller.

14.

Dianne Wiest reprised the role for Theatre for a New Audience in downtown Brooklyn, New York, in the spring of 2017 and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2019.

15.

Under Woody Allen's direction, Dianne Wiest won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Hannah and Her Sisters in 1987 and Bullets over Broadway in 1995.

16.

Dianne Wiest followed her first Oscar success with performances in The Lost Boys and Bright Lights, Big City.

17.

Dianne Wiest starred 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.

18.

Dianne Wiest received another nomination for her performance in the 1999 telefilm The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn, co-starring Sidney Poitier.

19.

Dianne Wiest starred in the television mini-series The 10th Kingdom in 2000.

20.

Dianne Wiest starred alongside Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche in Dan in Real Life and had a key supporting role in Charlie Kaufman's 2008 film Synecdoche, New York.

21.

Dianne Wiest received another nomination for the second season, in 2009, but did not win.

22.

Dianne Wiest starred alongside Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole, which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival.

23.

Dianne Wiest co-starred in Lawrence Kasdan's 2012 comedy Darling Companion, alongside Kevin Kline and Diane Keaton.

24.

In 2020, Dianne Wiest starred in Steven Soderbergh's drama Let Them All Talk alongside Meryl Streep, and Candice Bergen.

25.

Dianne Wiest was in a relationship with her talent agent Sam Cohn for three years in the mid-1980s.

26.

Dianne Wiest has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress receiving two wins for her performances in the Woody Allen films Hannah and Her Sisters and Bullets over Broadway.

27.

Dianne Wiest has received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her work on television, winning two awards for Road to Avonlea and In Treatment.

28.

Dianne Wiest has received two Golden Globe Award nominations and two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.