Dyan Cannon

Cannon was born Samille Diane Friesen in Tacoma, Washington, on January 4, 1937, the daughter of housewife Claire (née Portnoy) and life insurance salesman Ben Friesen. She was raised in the Jewish faith of her mother, who was an immigrant from Ukraine; her father was a Mennonite of Dutch-Canadian ancestry. Her younger brother is jazz musician David Friesen. When Cannon was 10, the family moved eastward to Spokane, Washington; they returned to the Pacific coast four years later, settling in Seattle. Cannon attended West Seattle High School and was crowned Miss West Seattle in 1954. She spent two and a half semesters at the University of Washington, majoring in anthropology. In 1956, Cannon dropped out of college and went to live with her aunt Sally in Phoenix, Arizona, where she took a job at Merrill Lynch & Co. Courted by nightclub owner Sonny Orling, then 32, she got engaged and followed him to Beverly Hills, California. They soon parted, but she decided to stay in the area and enroll at UCLA, studying anthropology and writing. ==Career==

Beginnings Cannon made her film debut in 1960 in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond; she had appeared on television since the late 1950s, including a guest appearance on Bat Masterson as Mary Lowery in the 1959 episode "Lady Luck" and again in a 1961 episode as Diane Jansen in "The Price of Paradise". She appeared in 1959 on CBS's Wanted: Dead or Alive, in episode 52, "Vanishing Act", as Nicole McCready. About this time, she was on the CBS Western Johnny Ringo, starring Don Durant, and on Jack Lord's Western Stoney Burke on ABC. She also appeared on Hawaiian Eye in 1961, opposite Tracey Steele, Robert Conrad, and Connie Stevens. In 1962, Cannon acted on Broadway with Jane Fonda and Bradford Dillman in The Fun Couple. Next came the national touring company of the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, in which she played Rosemary. In 1973, Cannon starred opposite Burt Reynolds in Shamus and played an agent based on Sue Mengers in The Last of Sheila, and was named Actress of the Year by the National Association of Theatre Owners. In 1974, she gave a critically acclaimed performance in Child Under a Leaf and starred in the made-for-TV movie Virginia Hill with Harvey Keitel. Following this, she took a four-year absence from acting in feature films. Among the offers she turned down was Jacqueline Bisset's role in St. Ives (1976). Cannon, who is also a singer/songwriter, starred in her own musical stage act at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and Harrah's Lake Tahoe during the mid-1970s. She then enrolled in the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women. She became the first Oscar-nominated actress to be nominated in the Best Short Film, Live Action category for Number One (1976), a project which Cannon produced, directed, wrote, and edited. It was a story about adolescent sexual curiosity. In 1978, Cannon co-starred in Revenge of the Pink Panther. That same year, she appeared in Heaven Can Wait, for which she received another Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Cannon hosted Saturday Night Live during its first season and guest-starred in the fourth season of The Muppet Show. She co-starred with then-boyfriend Armand Assante in the TV movie Lady of the House (1978), a dramatization of the life of Sally Stanford. In 1979, the Hollywood Women's Press Club voted Cannon as Female Star of the Year. Cannon appeared in Honeysuckle Rose (1980) with Willie Nelson, Coast to Coast (1980) with Robert Blake, Author! Author! (1982) with Al Pacino, and Sidney Lumet's Deathtrap (1982) with Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve. She starred in the TV movie Having It All (1982), as well as a miniseries, Master of the Game (1984), then had the title role in ''Jenny's War (1985). After making Rock 'n' Roll Mom (1988) for Disney, she appeared with an ensemble cast in Caddyshack II'' (1988). In addition, she co-wrote the title track for Chaka Khan's album, The Woman I Am, with Brenda Russell. For her contributions to the film industry, Cannon was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1983 with a motion picture star located at 6608 Hollywood Boulevard. Later work Cannon wrote, directed, and starred in the semiautobiographical film The End of Innocence (1990). She subsequently appeared opposite Phylicia Rashad in Jailbirds (1991) and Kris Kristofferson and Tony Curtis in Christmas in Connecticut (1992), the latter of which was directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, before reuniting with Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice director Paul Mazursky for The Pickle (1993), alongside Danny Aiello. Cannon had guest roles on the popular television shows Diagnosis: Murder and The Practice, and was a semiregular on Ally McBeal. In 1997, she could be seen in three major studio film releases: 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag with Joe Pesci; a remake of That Darn Cat; and Out to Sea with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. Also that year, she worked with Sarah Michelle Gellar in the TV movie Beverly Hills Family Robinson. In 2001 and 2002, she had a regular part in the TV series Three Sisters. Cannon and Christopher Walken were reunited for Kangaroo Jack (2003), but her performance was cut down to a walk on in the final version of the film. In 2005, she appeared in Boynton Beach Club, a movie about aging Floridians who have just lost their spouses; Cannon's real-life ex Michael Nouri played her love interest. Her later roles included A Kiss at Midnight (2008) for Hallmark and the unaired pilot Women Without Men (2010) with Lorraine Bracco and Penny Marshall. She wrote and directed another short, Unleashed (2010). Cannon returned to the stage to star in a 2013 production of Ken Ludwig's The Fox on the Fairway in Overland Park, Kansas. Cannon published a bestselling memoir, Dear Cary: My Life with Cary Grant, in 2011. She had previously been approached by Swifty Lazar to write about her late ex-husband in 1986, turning down "millions", and declined another publishing offer some years later from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, stating that healing was still needed. Cannon served as executive producer of a four-part miniseries based on her book, entitled Archie, which premiered on BritBox in 2023 and stars Jason Isaacs as Grant and Laura Aikman as Cannon. In 2025, she began co-hosting the podcast God’s Table alongside Tracey E. Bregman, Kym Douglas, and Christine Avanti-Fischer. ==Personal life==

In 1961, Cannon began dating actor Cary Grant, who was 33 years her senior. They married on July 22, 1965, and had one daughter, Jennifer (b. February 26, 1966). Cannon filed for divorce in September 1967, and it was finalized on March 21, 1968. Cannon married a second time on April 18, 1985, to lawyer-turned-real estate investor Stanley Fimberg. They divorced in 1991. In 2024, Cannon said Fimberg and she are still friendly. Cannon has also been in relationships with comedian Mort Sahl, talent agent Ron Weisner, and sculptor Carl Hartman, as well as producers Murray Shostak and Leonard Rabinowitz, directors Jerry Schatzberg and Hal Ashby, and actors Armand Assante, Hy Chase, Ron Ely and Michael Nouri. She remains friendly with Nouri and accompanied him to a premiere four decades after their breakup. In 2025, Cannon told a reporter for People magazine that she has several friends with benefits. She later clarified that she had misunderstood the term. Shostak and Rabinowitz produced her starring vehicles Child Under a Leaf and The End of Innocence, respectively; Schatzberg directed her in Honeysuckle Rose; Assante and Nouri were her leading men in Lady of the House and Boynton Beach Club, respectively; and she guest-starred on Ely's series Malibu Run. In 1972, Cannon revealed that she engaged in primal therapy. She also dabbled in metaphysics and got kicked out of Esalen. Cannon smoked three packs of cigarettes a day until 1971; she decided to stop after reading the habit would dull her libido. She was a vegetarian for a long time, but quit that too. A longtime fixture at Los Angeles Lakers games, she is considered the team's second-most famous fan behind Jack Nicholson. For 12 years, Cannon hosted God's Party, a biweekly Bible study held at Radford Studio Center. She formerly identified as a born-again Christian, but has since expressed she is spiritual but not religious. ==Philanthropy==

Cannon's experience as a single mother led to her becoming national spokeswoman for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, which provides emotional support and companionship for children of one-parent homes. She paid for the tombstone of slain runaway Alyssa Margie 'Raven' Gomez, whom she'd met while making a documentary about homelessness. Cannon has used her celebrity to benefit other charitable organizations, such as Special Olympics, for mentally and physically disabled athletes. ==Filmography==