Voting Station

Marian Seldes

Please vote to return to collections.

Actress

The Resume

    (August 23, 1928-October 6, 2014)
    Born in Manhattan, New York City, New York
    Acted in 'The Haunting,' 'Leatherheads,' 'Mona Lisa Smile,' and 'Truman'
    Appeared on Broadway in 'That Lady' (1949 - 50), 'A Delicate Balance' (1966-67), 'Father's Day' (1971), 'Equus' (1974-77), 'Deathtrap' (1978–82), 'Ivanov' (1997-98), 'Ring Round the Moon' (1999), 'Dinner at Eight' (2002-03) and 'Deuce' (2007)
    Daughter of Gilbert Seldes
    Married to Garson Kanin (1990 - 99)
    Taught acting at Juilliard (1967 - 91)

Why she might be annoying:

    She had sort of angular features that tended to prevent her from getting cast as leading ladies or young heroines.
    She took part in a psychedelic episode of The Rifleman in which a Typhoid-stricken Mark hallucinates that a dance hall girl is his dead mother (Johnny Crawford compared it to The Twilight Zone).
    She has a credential sheet heavy enough to sink a pontoon boat twice over, but is usually only known for playing Mr. Big's mother on Sex and the City.
    Of course, to most millennials she'll always be the prickly neighbor Miss Hess who gets kidnapped at the end of Home Alone 3 ('I had the chicken pox back when Herbert Hoover was in the White House!').

Why she might not be annoying:

    Her first husband was abusive.
    She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1995.
    She received the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2010.
    She had a successful working partnership with Edward Albee.
    When she taught at Juilliard, her students included Robin Williams, Christopher Reeve William Hurt, and Laura Linney.
    She won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for 'A Delicate Balance' in 1967 (there would be four more nominations to follow between 1971 and 2002).
    She made the Guinness Book of World Records for appearing in 'Deathtrap' for four years without ever missing a single performance.
    She said: 'I've never been obsessed by how I looked. In fact, I would rather have looked more ordinary so I could play more parts truthfully. You know what I'm saying?'

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 5 Votes: 20.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 0% Annoying