Glynnis O'Connor

Born on November 19, 1955, in Long Island, Glynnis Mary O'Connor was primed for acting right from the beginning. Her father, Daniel O'Connor (1921-2015), was producer, executive producer, and managing director of NBC Special News for over 25 years. Her mother, former stage, film and TV actress Lenka Peterson, who worked with Glynnis in a couple of her daughter's assignments. Her brother, Darren O'Connor, was also an actor back in the 1970s. In her late teens, she was featured on the daytime soap As the World Turns (1956) and the prime-time family series Sons and Daughters (1974), opposite Gary Frank. A graduate of the State University of New York, Glynnis found her brief niche portraying sensitive, fretful young 1970's romantics, hitting her stride early with Jeremy (1973) (she also sang the title song); Ode to Billy Joe (1976) (based on the hit song by Bobbie Gentry), and as "Emily Gibb" in the TV movie Our Town (1977) -- all of them opposite (then) off-screen boyfriend Robby Benson. Other prime 70's credits included the social drama All Together Now (1975); the biographical drama The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976) starring up-and-coming John Travolta in the title role; and the moving drama Baby Blue Marine (1976) starring Jan-Michael Vincent. Glynnis also played a sensitive misfit in the touching comedy California Dreaming (1979); a dancer who gets involved with awkward theatre hopeful Tom Hulce in the romantic comedy Those Lips, Those Eyes (1980); and, best of all, ill-fated tennis champion Maureen Connolly in the TV biopic Little Mo (1978). With all this diversity displayed, Glynnis surprisingly did not hit the top ranks. Her name and off-camera personality somehow never quite meshed with the movie-going public despite her continued excellence. In Melanie (1982), she played as an uneducated woman trying to regain custody of her son. In Why Me? (1984), she played as an Air Force nurse forced to readjust after being disfigured in a car accident. She also co-starred in the poignant TV-movie Love Leads the Way: A True Story (1984) starring Timothy Bottoms as a recently blinded man fighting the law in using a seeing eye dog. Glynnis has continued occasionally on film with featured roles in the Michael Keaton/Joe Piscopo comedy Johnny Dangerously (1984); the Taye Diggs mystery thriller New Best Friend (2002); the comedy crime caper Graduation (2007); the psychological thriller Heaven's Messenger (2008); the comedy The Trouble with Cali (2012) directed by and starring Paul Sorvino; the social drama The Historian (2014); the Victorian drama Angelica (2015) and the Mary Kay Place drama Diane (2018). Seen more on TV, credits include guest parts on "The Chisholms," "The New Twilight Zone" "Reasonable Doubts" and "Young Americans," as well as recurring parts on Law & Order (1990) and Condor (2018), and a number of TV movies including Sins of the Father (1985), Too Good to Be True (1988), Nightmare in the Daylight (1992), Death in Small Doses (1995) and Ellen Foster (1997). Married to New Yorker Douglas Stern, they have two daughters together, Lindsay and Hana,