Illeana Douglas

Illeana Hesselberg (born July 25, 1961), known professionally as Illeana Douglas, is an American actress and filmmaker. She appeared in three episodes of Six Feet Under, for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination as Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series and won the Best Guest Actress in a Drama Series award from OFTA, the Online Film & Television Association, and in the TV series Action opposite Jay Mohr, for which she won a Satellite Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy. , she can be seen on Turner Classic Movies where she hosts specials focused on unheralded women directors from film history. Early life Douglas was born either in New Haven, Connecticut or Quincy, Massachusetts, the daughter of Joan Douglas (née Georgescu), a schoolteacher, and Gregory Hesselberg, a painter. Douglas's father was the son of Hollywood actor Melvyn Douglas and his wife, the artist Rosalind Hightower. Douglas had two older brothers, the late Stefan Gregor Hesselberg, a technician in the histology laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who also trained racehorses in Verona, Italy, and Erik Hesselberg, a journalist. Douglas grew up in Connecticut, in the Old Saybrook area, and has said that she was also raised in many other cities, in Massachusetts where her father lived, Connecticut where her mother lived, and New York, where her extended family lived. During her childhood she spent time going back and forth between relatives during the summer. Douglas said that her parents were heavily influenced by the 1970s hippie culture—her father especially by the movie Easy Rider. They had a loose parenting style and did not pressure her to go to college. Comedy albums were popular in her family. They would put on dramatic interpretations and performances. Douglas's mother's side is Roman Catholic—Italian and Romanian from Astoria, Queens. Her maternal grandmother worked in the restaurant at Gertz department store in Astoria; her maternal grandfather was a welder. Douglas said that her maternal grandmother, a former Rockette, had wanted to be an actor. She instilled in Douglas a love for the movies, which they attended together frequently when she was a child.