Dunfee began her professional acting career at the Ogunquit Playhouse in
Ogunquit, Maine, In the early 1960s, she operated the Nora Dunfee Studio in New York. Dunfee studied speech and voice under
Margaret Prendergast McLean and taught for many years in the graduate acting program of the
Tisch School of the Arts at
New York University. She also taught privately in New York and California and coached many actors over the years, including
Julie Haydon,
James Earl Jones,
Raul Julia,
Diane Keaton,
Mel Gibson and
Keanu Reeves. In theater, she was a vocal consultant for
The Real Thing.
Two Gentlemen of Verona and
A Lie of the Mind, and cinematically, she served as dialect coach for such films as
Witness,
Crimes of the Heart, and
The Serpent and the Rainbow. Dunfee met her future husband,
David Clarke, in an acting class and the two married in 1946. Plays in which they acted together included
Portrait of a Lady,
The Visit and
The Gin Game. Clarke and Dunfee had two daughters together, K.C. and Susan. Her last consulting job was on the film
Rob Roy (1995). Dunfee was working as Sissy Spacek's dialogue coach and preparing for her own role in Charles Matthau's adaptation of
Truman Capote's
The Grass Harp when she became ill and had to leave the shoot. ==Death==