Diane Venora Best Actress

Diane Venora was born in Hartford, Connecticut and later attended the Julliard School of Drama on a full scholarship. Diane played Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1982. Then dark-haired, NY stage actress, Diane, really attracted notice as an unlikely Prince of Denmark in the New York Shakespeare Festival's 1983 production of Hamlet.

Diane acted in plays like Uncle Vanya, Tomorrow's Monday and Largo Desolato. Her film debut was in Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, but her breakthrough came in Wolfen and her brief appearance as Gloria Swanson in Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club.

Then she played the wife of jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker in Bird, a biographical film by Clint Eastwood. This is the performance that earned her the Golden Globe nomination and a New York Film Critic’s award and it was after this role that she suddenly quit show business. With her marriage at an end, Diane chose to put her career on hold to be near her daughter who was then 8 years old. It became a 7-year hiatus in which she raised her daughter, taught disadvantaged children and acted in an occasional play. When Madzia turned 15, she and her mother moved to LA where Diane’s career resumed. Diane landed a starring role in the ABC series Thunder Alley and a recurring role in the Emmy award-winning series Chicago Hope.

In 1995, she starred opposite Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the hit thriller Heat, earning kudos from critics for her memorable portrayal of the strong and intelligent Justine Hanna. She also played opposite Anthony Hopkins in Surviving Picasso. She followed up her amazing performance as Lady Capulet in Romeo & Juliet with two action pictures; first playing Major Valentina Koslova in The Jackal with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere and then co-starring with Antonio Banderas in the Viking adventure, The Thirteenth Warrior. In 1999, Diane appeared in five separate movies. In 2000, Diane played Gertrude in Hamlet and Dr. Helen Steele in Race Against Time. Last year she played the wife of “the Anti-Christ” opposite Michael York in Megiddo, the sequel to The Omega Code. It’s no wonder that as her next project she chose the comedy/thriller Heartbreak Hospital.