1980s: Stage, television, China Beach After college, she found acting work in New York City in daytime soap operas including
Love of Life and
As the World Turns, and supported herself by acting in commercials such as for
Wisk laundry detergent. She starred in the Broadway show
A Life and won critical acclaim in 1983 in Nicholas Kazan's off-Broadway
Blood Moon, where
The New York Times cited her "skillful verisimilitude" handling a difficult part requiring two roles "and she does them both with authority". Delany moved to Hollywood and during the next few years found work guest starring in TV shows like
Moonlighting and
Magnum, P.I. and
Thirtysomething. Delany's first audition for the lead role of nurse
Colleen McMurphy was unsuccessful. "They thought I wasn't pretty enough", she said in an interview. She finally won the role when she showed up to her next audition with her "long tresses cut into a bob", after the producers lost their first choice (Delany had cut her hair at the request of director
Paul Schrader, who had cast her in the film
Patty Hearst).
China Beach aired weekly from 1988 to 1991 and brought intense media attention to the actress. but two additional
Primetime Emmy Award nominations and two
Golden Globe Award nominations. The show ended after four seasons in 1991. In the years following
China Beach, Delany worked steadily in television, movies and theater. In addition, she established herself as a significant voice talent. Delany won leading roles in a string of feature films such as the TV movie
A Promise to Keep,
Light Sleeper,
Housesitter and
Fly Away Home, as well as appearing in the TV mini-series
Wild Palms. She also took on controversial roles, such as Mistress Lisa in
Exit to Eden, where one film critic commented "The script was awful—Dana looked great". On September 21, 1993, the
CBS television film
Donato and Daughter, directed by
Rod Holcomb, premiered. In it Delany is paired with
Charles Bronson to play the leads. Delany plays Bronson's daughter, both cops assigned to investigate a serial killer. Delany pointed to several reason to why she wanted to do the project. She said the story was appealing because "it was the relationship between the two that interested me. We see so many movies now about serial killers, it's really being overdone, so I wanted to emphasize the relationship between father and daughter". Also she liked that they were no romantic subplot by saying "why is it that in every movie, there has to be a male female thing going on? Why can't it be about a woman and her family and her work? That was the challenge because you want her to be strong and capable, but you also don't want her to be one-dimensional". Another reason she accepted is because she wanted to work with Charles Bronson. In Kay Gardella's review published in
The Gazette she says "Delany and Bronson work well together. Bronson shows a warmer, more caring side than his usual tough-guy image allows. And Delany, as attractive as ever, is crisp and efficient as cop". On December 25,
Tombstone premiered in cinemas. She turned in her best known performance of the decade alongside
Kurt Russell's
Wyatt Earp, playing his love interest and future bride
Josephine Marcus. Now a box office draw in her own right, the stage was set for the success she would encounter later in her career.
Live Nude Girls included frank discussion by women of their sexual fantasies at a bachelorette party using a low-budget improvisational comedy format with strong chemistry between the actors. Reviews were mixed:
Los Angeles Times critic Richard Natale liked the film but wrote older male film executives believed it to be "uncommercial"; another critic agreed it was "genuine girl talk" but "didn't have a lot of substance" and viewers "don't get to know the characters in the film". She also starred as
Margaret Sanger in the TV movie
Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story (1995), about the controversial nurse who crusaded for women's reproductive rights in the early 1900s. In 1995, Delany appeared in the Broadway show
Translations and in May 1997, she returned to her alma mater
Phillips Academy to work with theater students as an artist-in-residence. In 1998, Delany reportedly turned down the role of
Carrie Bradshaw in the hit TV show
Sex and the City. She declined the role partly because of the negative audience reaction she received with a similar film,
Exit to Eden, a few years prior.
Sex and the City became a successful series, and the role of Carrie made
Sarah Jessica Parker world-famous. Delany played a gun-toting mother in an episode of the TV series
Family Law (1999) for which she earned a
Primetime Emmy Award nomination, but the series was not rerun due to sponsorship withdrawal. Delany's first voice work was the character
Andrea Beaumont in the 1993 animated feature film
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm based on the popular TV show
Batman: The Animated Series. She was also mentioned by name in one variation of the theme song of
Animaniacs, another Warner Bros. production. She then voiced Lois Lane in
Superman: The Animated Series, reprised her role as Lois Lane for the character's guest appearances in
Justice League,
Justice League Unlimited. She also voiced the character in
The Batman. She returned to the
DC Universe in an episode of
Batman: The Brave and the Bold as Vilsi, an alternate universe variation of Lois Lane. She reprised her role in the 2013 animated movie,
Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox.
2000s: Television, movies, stage, Desperate Housewives ,
Brenda Strong, and
Andrea Bowen at the
20th GLAAD Media Awards in 2009. Delany continued to find work in a variety of projects, doing pilots, TV series, made-for-TV movies, and feature films. She appeared in the NBC drama
Good Guys/Bad Guys (2000), which
Newsweek termed a "Sopranos knock-off". She appeared in the short-lived
Pasadena (2001), a Fox production which was described as a "twisted rich-family saga" with a "great cast". Delany commented in an interview: "You can see
Pasadena as a black comedy or see it as really tragic. A lot of soaps on television now don't have that layer of tragedy to them". She was an actor and co-executive producer of the film
Final Jeopardy (2001).
New York Daily News TV critic David Bianculli gave a positive review to both her performance as an actor—"Delany, as always, does pensive and independent better than most actresses"—and as a producer. She played a doctor in the TV series
Presidio Med (2002), described as a "conventional but pleasant drama populated by characters dedicated to medicine who also have messy personal lives". She appeared in TV movies such as
A Time to Remember (2003), and
Baby for Sale (2004). She appeared in feature films by
indie film producers, such as
The Outfitters (1999),
Mother Ghost (2002), and
Spin (2003). Returning to theater, she played an artsy and incompetent woman who questions the "imposed conventions of society" after discovering her husband's affair in the Pulitzer-prize winning
Dinner With Friends (2000, New York City, Los Angeles,
Boston); her performance earned positive reviews generally. She played
Beatrice in Shakespeare's
Much Ado About Nothing (2003,
San Diego); one critic described the "verbal sparring" between Delany and actor
Billy Campbell as a "joy". From 2004 to 2006, Delany played many guest roles on TV shows, such as
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,
Boston Legal,
Kojak,
Related,
The L Word, and
Battlestar Galactica. She also starred in the short-lived TV series
Kidnapped (2006). One critic wrote "Delany is alternately furious and despondent as Ellie, and she and Hutton (
Timothy Hutton) can do more without words than other actors can do with pages of dialogue. They're absolutely convincing as rich, complicated Manhattanites and as parents who come face to face with the scary reality that they can't always protect their kids". Delany appeared as herself in the TV documentary
Vietnam Nurses with Dana Delany which explored their lives and treatment after returning to the United States. Delany has become "something of a heroine to the nurses who served in Vietnam", according to
Los Angeles Times writer Susan King, who noted that the actress worked on a nationwide nurse recruitment program in 1990 called the McMurphy project. Delany initially declined the offer to play one of the four
Desperate Housewives principal characters,
Bree Van De Kamp, saying it was too similar to her role on
Pasadena. Reaction to the addition of Delany was positive; one critic wrote "...casting Dana Delany as Katherine Mayfair in Season 4 is one of the smartest things Cherry has ever done. Not many actors can deftly deliver both comedy and drama, but Delany makes it look easy". She commented about playing housewife Katherine Mayfair: "The hardest thing for me was figuring out the tone of the piece because it's such a specific tone – so it was more of an acting challenge than anything else". She commented in 2008: "I hope that she doesn't lose her snarkiness, because that's always fun to play". On May 13, 2008, it was announced that Delany would reprise her role on
Desperate Housewives for season five, having been promoted to the sixth lead.
2010s: Television series and movies In March 2010, Delany appeared as FBI agent Jordan Shaw in a two-part story on the TV series
Castle, which stars
Nathan Fillion, who played her character's second husband on
Desperate Housewives. Delany also voiced a character
Margaret Rosenblatt in the film
Firebreather in 2010. Delany left
Desperate Housewives to star in the new ABC series
Body of Proof originally slated to begin airing in late 2010. In the series, Delany played a brilliant
neurosurgeon turned
medical examiner after a car accident causes her to lose dexterity in her hands. Delany in real life had an experience similar to her character of Dr. Megan Hunt. Two weeks before filming the pilot episode, Delany's car was hit by a bus in
Santa Monica; two fingers of her hand were broken and her car was totaled. Delany describes her character in
Body of Proof as being "complicated, smart, and definitely complex". In 2011, Delany came ninth in
People magazine's annual 100 Most Beautiful list. Delany appeared in the crime drama
Freelancers with director
Jessy Terrero. The film also stars
Robert De Niro,
Forest Whitaker, and
50 Cent. It was released to DVD on August 21, 2012, and had a limited release in theatres in September. In December 2016, Delany was the primetime guest host on
Turner Classic Movies. She appeared in dozens of
wraparounds on the channel, filling in for
Robert Osborne. Delany was cast for CBS's Drama
The Code in August 2018. ==Personal life and public image==