Diana Bellamy

Plump and personable character actress Diana Bellamy was born on September 19, 1943 in Los Angeles. She graduated with a master's degree in Fine Arts from Southern Methodist University (SMU) in 1970. Diana Alice Bellamy began her acting career in puppet theater in her native Los Angeles. On the big screen, she had such memorable small roles as a sassy whorehouse madam in Outrageous Fortune (1987), a sharp-tongued secretary in Outbreak (1995), and a sarcastic White House switchboard operator in Air Force One (1997). On television, Bellamy played Mrs. Pennington in The Nest (1987) and Grace Woods in Spellbinder (1988), and had recurring parts as Maggie Poole on 13 East (1989) and as Mrs. Cha-Cha Rimba Starkey on Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad (1994). Among the many series on which she made one-off appearances were "Married with Children", "Melrose Place", "Nash Bridges", "Wings", "Murphy Brown", "Baywatch", "Quantom Leap", "Alien Nation", "Family Ties", "Newhart", "Hunter", "The Fall Guy", "Hill Street Blues", and "T.J. Hooker". Outside of her film and television credits, Bellamy did a substantial amount of stage acting: She did three seasons with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland and also acted in stage productions of "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You" (as the title character), "The House of Blue Leaves", and "The Skin of Our Teeth". Despite suffering from cancer, diabetes, and blindness in the last five years of her life, she continued to act. Her last roles included the blind Principal Cecelia Hall on Popular (1999) and the crippled Mrs. Nichols onstage in "The Ladies of the Corridor". Bellamy died on June 17, 2001 at age 57 at her home in Valley Village, California.