Dana Ivey

Dana Robins Ivey (born August 12, 1941) is an American character actress, who has performed on Broadway and other stage roles, in film and on television. --- Ivey was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Her mother, Mary Nell Ivey Santacroce (née McKoin), was a teacher, speech therapist, and actress who appeared in productions of Driving Miss Daisy and taught at Georgia State University. Her father, Hugh Daugherty Ivey, was a physicist and professor who taught at Georgia Tech and later worked at the Atomic Energy Commission. Her parents later divorced. She has a younger brother, John, and a half-brother, Eric Santacroce, from her mother's re-marriage to Dante Santacroce. She received her undergraduate degree at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, and earned a Fulbright grant to study drama at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She received an Honorary Doctorate (Humane Letters) from Rollins College in February 2008. Ivey's first job was at the age of 16, in Davison's, a department store in Atlanta, GA. With the earnings, she bought a guitar and opened a bank account for her savings. --- Ivey appeared in numerous American and Canadian stage productions before making New York City her home in the late 1970s. She made her Broadway debut playing two small roles in a 1981 production of Macbeth; the following year she was cast in a major supporting role in a revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter, for which she received the Clarence Derwent Award as Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play. She was nominated for two Tony Awards in the same season (1984) - as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George and Best Featured Actress in a Play for a revival of Heartbreak House - a feat repeated by only three other actresses, Amanda Plummer, Jan Maxwell and Kate Burton. Ivey's first major screen appearance was in Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Alice Walker's The Color Purple in 1985. Among her other film credits are Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the 1995 remake of Sabrina, Simon Birch, Postcards from the Edge, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,The Addams Family, Addams Family Values, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde, The Adventures of Huck Finn, Rush Hour 3, the 2011 version of The Importance of Being Earnest, and as Sandra Bullock's character's mother, Mrs. Kelson, in Two Weeks Notice. In 2011, she played the role of Grace Higginbotham in the critically acclaimed film, The Help.