Jenny O'Hara

Patricia Joanne "Jenny" O'Hara (born February 24, 1942) is an American film, television, and stage actress. She is best known for Dixie in My Sister Sam (1986–1988), Janet Heffernan in The King of Queens (2001–2007), and Nita in Big Love (2006–2009). Personal life O'Hara was born in Sonora, California. Her father, John B. O'Hara, was a salesman, and her mother, Edith (Hopkins) O'Hara, was a journalist and drama teacher, who founded and continued to run the 13th Street Repertory Company in New York City for many years before her death at age 103 in 2020. Jenny, her singer/actress younger sister Jill O'Hara, and her singer/guitarist brother Jack O'Hara, grew up amid their mother's pursuit of a theatrical career. John and Edith O'Hara eventually divorced. Edith O'Hara directed a children's theater in Warren, Pennsylvania, where the two daughters occasionally acted. Jenny O'Hara debuted on stage at age 5 at the Bushkill Playhouse in the Poconos. Career She spent a year at Carnegie Tech (now part of Carnegie-Mellon University) in Pittsburgh and a summer playing in stock theater, and then came to New York to study with Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner. In 1964 she appeared on Broadway in the dramatic play Dylan at the Plymouth Theatre opposite Sir Alec Guinness, and in 1969 appeared in the musical The Fig Leaves Are Falling at the Broadhurst Theatre with Dorothy Loudon. Her other Broadway credits include Promises, Promises, The Iceman Cometh, and The Odd Couple. In 1970, O'Hara succeeded her younger sister, Jill (who had been nominated for a Tony Award) in the musical Promises, Promises. She graduated to television, both in series and made-for-TV features, including starring roles in: Brinks: The Great Robbery, The Return of the World's Greatest Detective, Blind Ambition and Blinded by the Light with Kristy McNichol.