Dianne Wiest

Maternal granddaughter of Niel Stewart (1891-1967), born in Arbroath, Scotland, and Edith Rose (née McDougall) Keddie (1892-1978), born in Tomintoul, Scotland.

Paternal granddaughter of Bernard Mathew (1896-1986) and Emma Louise (née Cosulich) Wiest (1896-1977). Both were born and raised in the state of Pennsylvania.

Daughter of Bernard (1922-1986), born in the state of Pennsylvania, and Anne (née Keddie) Wiest (1920-1989), born in Scotland and immigrated to America in 1948.

Both her Oscar-winning performances were directed by Woody Allen. This makes her one of four actors to win two Oscars under the same person's direction. The other three are: Walter Brennan for Come and Get It (1936) and The Westerner (1940) (both directed by William Wyler), Jack Nicholson for Terms of Endearment (1983) and As Good as It Gets (1997) (both directed by James L. Brooks) and Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012) (both directed by Quentin Tarantino).

Along with Shelley Winters, she is one of only two actresses to have won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on two occasions: Winters won for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and A Patch of Blue (1965) and Wiest won for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994).

Graduated from the University of Maryland in 1969 with a degree in Arts and Sciences.

One of three children (she has two brothers, Greg and Don), Dianne Wiest was born in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. Her mother, Anne Stewart (Keddie), was a nurse from Auchtermuchty, Scotland, and her father, Bernard John Wiest, was a college dean and social worker who was born in Pennsylvania, of German and Croatian descent. Dianne's original ambition was to be a ballerina, but she was bitten by the acting bug after some stage work, most notably playing Desdemona to James Earl Jones' Othello on Broadway. She made her film debut in 1980, but did not make a name for herself until her performance as Emma, a prostitute during the 1930s Depression, in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Allen was so impressed by Wiest's acting ability that he has directed her on four more occasions since.

Is just 9 years older than Lori Singer, who played her daughter in Footloose (1984).

Listed as one of twelve "Promising New Actors of 1985" in John Willis' Screen World, Vol. 37.

Under Allen's direction, Wiest won a well deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, for her brilliant performance as the neurotic, wannabe actress Holly in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).

She followed her Academy Award success with performances in The Lost Boys (1987) and Bright Lights, Big City (1988) before stealing the show from the likes of Steve Martin, Mary Steenburgen, Jason Robards, Keanu Reeves and Martha Plimpton in Ron Howard's Parenthood (1989). Playing Helen Buckman, the divorced mother of two difficult teenagers, Wiest was both touching and hilarious, and received her second Oscar nomination.

Arguably her most beloved role came as Peg Boggs, the kindly Avon Lady who discovers the titular Edward Scissorhands (1990).

Wiest returned to Woody Allen for Bullets Over Broadway (1994), a superb comedy film set in 1920s New York, winning her second Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her magnificent portrayal of Helen Sinclair, a boozy, glamorous and neurotic star of the stage, who could made the words "Don't speak!" the funniest sentence ever captured on film.

Co-starring in "Salome: The Reading" with Al Pacino and Marisa Tomei on Broadway. [April 2003]

Resides in the Upper West Side of New York City [October 2006]

Performing on Broadway alongside Katie Holmes in the revival of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in New York. [September 2008]