Susan Dey
Susan Dey, Born in Pekin, Illinois, December 10, 1952, where her family lived only briefly, Miss Dey spent most of her school days in the State of New York, where her father became editor of a group of newspapers on Long Island. She finished her schooling at Mt. Kisco.
Susan is one of four children. Susan's sister Leslie became a model too just like her sister and they worked for the same agency.
Actually, Susan and her sister became interested in modeling through their mother, who after reading an article on fashion modeling in Seventeen Magazine, submitted their pictures to a top modeling agency in New York who immediately signed them. That was in 1968.
Susan enrolled in the Drama Club at Fox Lane High School in 1968, where she played Elaine in "Arsenic and Old Lace", and Amanda's prologue in "Summer and Smoke". In fact, she was supposed to portray a duck in their Christmas extravaganza, but she turned it down to do her featured role in Screen Gems' new series, "The Partridge Family". As Laurie, the pretty eighteen year old, sensible, eldest daughter and keyboardist of the traveling musical clan, she exuded an earnest, slightly gawky charm, even when her braces were wreaking havoc with the group's electrical equipment in a memorable episode.
After the show went off the air, Dey tried her luck on the big screen playing opposite William Katt in the bland teen romance "First Love" (1977), played the tomboyish Jo March in a TV adaptation of "Little Women" (NBC, 1978) and kept reasonably busy in a series of modest TV-movies, failed sitcom pilots and several other features. The best of the latter was the "Echo Park" (1985), with Dey as a single mother with show business aspirations who rents a room to a writer (Tom Hulce). Released several years before the boom in independent films, it went practically unnoticed by mainstream Hollywood, despite earning good reviews.
A dutiful daughter role on the naval drama series "Emerald Point N.A.S." (CBS, 1983-84) failed to turn Dey's career around, but the role of Grace Van Owen, one of many high-powered attorneys peopling NBC's "L.A. Law", thrust her back into the spotlight. The long, straight hair of Laurie Partridge had been cut to a stylish bob, her alto voice a trifle deeper than before, Dey proved one of the series' main attractions over a six year run (1986-92).
She ventured back to sitcoms as co-star of CBS' "Love and War" in 1992, but her return to comedy was short-lived. Citing "creative differences" with the series' producers, Dey opted out after one season. She continued working in TV-movies of varying quality, some of which were executive produced by her husband, Bernard Sofronski. (Dey had co-producer credit on others.) Among the more notable were "Bed of Lies" (ABC, 1992), wherein she was a woman who killed her politician husband, "Lies and Lullabies" (ABC, 1993), as a drug addict, "Blue River" (Fox, 1995), as an emotionally-repressed mother, and "Bridge of Time" (Fox, 1997), as a UN worker, one of the passengers of a plane which crashes into a Shangri-la-like preserve.
Actress - filmography
2002 L.A. Law: The Movie
2002 Disappearance
1995 Blue River
1994 Beyond Betrayal
1993 Whose Child Is This? The War for Baby Jessica
1993 Love, Lies and Lullabies
1993 Lies and Lullabies
1992 Saturday Night Live: Susan Dey
1992 Bed of Lies
1990 That's Adequate
1989 I Love You Perfect
1987 The Trouble with Dick
1987 Angel in Green
1986 L.A. Law [TV Series]
1985 Echo Park
1984 Love Leads the Way
1983 Malibu
1983 Sunset Limousine
1982 The Gift of Life
1981 Looker
1980 The Comeback Kid
1978 Little Women
1977 First Love
1977 Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night
1976 The Captive: The Longest Drive II
1975 Cage Without a Key
1973 The Partridge Family: Season 04
1973 Terror on the Beach
1972 The Partridge Family: Season 03
1972 Skyjacked
1971 The Partridge Family: Season 02
1970 The Partridge Family [TV Series]
1970 The Partridge Family: Season 01
Co-producer
1993 Lies and Lullabies
1989 I Love You Perfect
Quotes
"At the time, nobody knew what it was. It had no name. When everything else is out of your control, you can control your eating. You end up cutting a lot of things off. Nothing reaches you. I was very happy then - that was the oddity." Susan Dey
"This little kid pointed at me and said, 'You look disgusting!' That was the first time I thought maybe I did. I decided I'd better start eating. I'm just thankful that I made it through with relatively few scars." Susan Dey." Susan Dey
Trivia
Daughter Sarah Hirshan born in November 1978.
Came to acting by way of a teen modeling career.
Measurements: 32-20-31 (during "The Partridge Family") (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine)
Turned down the role of Sandy in Grease...
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