Dyan Cannon (born Samille Diane Friesen; January 4, 1937) is an American actress, filmmaker and editor. Her accolades include a Saturn Award, a Golden Globe Award, three Academy Award nominations and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She was named Female Star of the Year by the National Association of Theatre Owners in 1973 and the Hollywood Women's Press Club in 1979. A former beauty queen who held the title of Miss West Seattle, Cannon made her television debut in 1958. Over the next decade, she became a common sight on episodic shows while appearing occasionally on Broadway and in B-movies. In 1969, she had her breakthrough film role in the sex comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Cannon was nominated in that category again for Heaven Can Wait (1978), earning her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture, and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama for her lead role in Such Good Friends (1971). She also was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film as the producer of Number One (1976). Other films in which Cannon has performed include The Love Machine (1971), Shamus (1973), The Last of Sheila (1973), Child Under a Leaf (1974), Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), Honeysuckle Rose (1980), Coast to Coast (1980), Deathtrap (1982), Author! Author! (1982), Caddyshack II (1988), 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997), Out to Sea (1997), and Boynton Beach Club (2005). Cannon made her feature directorial debut with 1990's semi-autobiographical drama The End of Innocence, which she also wrote and starred in. From 1997 to 2000 she played a recurring role on the legal series Ally McBeal. Before her career took off, Cannon was married to Cary Grant for three years and gave birth to his only child, daughter Jennifer. Reluctant to discuss the marriage since their 1968 divorce, Cannon turned down publishing deals following Grant's death in 1986. Her memoir Dear Cary (2011) became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2023, the book was adapted into a miniseries called Archie with Cannon executive producing.

Early life

Cannon was born Samille Diane Friesen in Tacoma, Washington, on January 4, 1937, the daughter of housewife Claire (née Portnoy) and life insurance salesman Ben Friesen. She was raised in the Jewish faith of her mother, who was an immigrant from Ukraine; her father was an Anabaptist of Canadian Mennonite ancestry. Her younger brother is jazz musician David Friesen. Cannon attended West Seattle High School and was crowned Miss West Seattle in 1954. She spent two and a half semesters at the University of Washington, majoring in anthropology. In 1956, Cannon dropped out of college and went to live with her aunt Sally in Phoenix, Arizona, where she took a job at Merrill Lynch & Co. Courted by nightclub owner Sonny Orling, then 32, she got engaged and followed him to Beverly Hills, California. They soon parted, but she decided to stay in the area and enroll at UCLA. A part-time modeling job led to an interview with producer Jerry Wald, who suggested she change her last name to Cannon. She signed to MGM, doing promotional work for the film Les Girls, and studied with acting teacher Sanford Meisner.

Career

Beginnings

Cannon made her film debut in 1960 in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond; she had appeared on television since the late 1950s, including a guest appearance on Bat Masterson as Mary Lowery in the 1959 episode "Lady Luck" and again in a 1961 episode as Diane Jansen in "The Price of Paradise". She appeared in 1959 on CBS's Wanted: Dead or Alive, in episode 52, "Vanishing Act", as Nicole McCready. About this time, she was on the CBS western Johnny Ringo, starring Don Durant, and on Jack Lord's western Stoney Burke on ABC. She also appeared on Hawaiian Eye in 1961, opposite Tracey Steele, Robert Conrad, and Connie Stevens. In 1962, Cannon acted on Broadway with Jane Fonda and Bradford Dillman in The Fun Couple. Next came the national touring company of the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, in which she played Rosemary. In 1964 she guest-starred on Gunsmoke, playing Ivy Norton, an abused daughter looking to marry the man she loves in the episode "Aunt Thede". She portrayed Mona Elliott in the episode "The Man Behind the Man" of the 1964 CBS drama series The Reporter and had a regular role on the short-lived daytime soap opera Full Circle. Cannon also made guest appearances on 77 Sunset Strip, The Untouchables, Tombstone Territory, the 1960 episode "Sheriff of the Town" of the first-run syndicated western series Two Faces West with Walter Coy as Cauter and the 1962 Ripcord episode "The Helicopter Race" as Ripcord Inc.'s secretary and receptionist Marion Hines. She landed another role in a feature with The Murder Game (1965), then took four years off.

Stardom

Cannon's first major film role came in 1969's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. In 1971 she starred in four films: The Love Machine, from the novel by Jacqueline Susann; The Anderson Tapes with Sean Connery and Christopher Walken; The Burglars with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Omar Sharif; and Otto Preminger's Such Good Friends, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. Her name was used to market a fifth release that year, Doctors' Wives, in which she had top billing despite only making a cameo appearance. Cannon was slated to appear in The Traveling Executioner (1970) and Double Indemnity (1973), but bowed out and was replaced by Marianna Hill and Samantha Eggar, respectively. In 1973, Cannon starred opposite Burt Reynolds in Shamus and played an agent based on Sue Mengers in The Last of Sheila, and was named Actress of the Year by the National Association of Theatre Owners. In 1974, she gave a critically acclaimed performance in Child Under a Leaf and starred in the made-for-TV movie Virginia Hill with Harvey Keitel. Following this she took a four-year absence from acting in feature films. Among the offers she turned down was Jacqueline Bisset's role in St. Ives (1976). Cannon starred in her own musical stage act at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and Harrah's Lake Tahoe during the mid-1970s. She then enrolled in the Women's Directing Workshop of the American Film Institute. She became the first Oscar-nominated actress to be nominated in the Best Short Film, Live Action category for Number One (1976), a project which Cannon produced, directed, wrote and edited. It was a story about adolescent sexual curiosity. In 1978, Cannon co-starred in Revenge of the Pink Panther. That same year, she appeared in Heaven Can Wait, for which she received another Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Cannon hosted Saturday Night Live during its first season and guest-starred in the fourth season of The Muppet Show. She co-starred with then-boyfriend Armand Assante in the TV movie Lady of the House (1978), a dramatization of the life of Sally Stanford. In 1979, the Hollywood Women's Press Club voted Cannon as Female Star of the Year. In the early 1980s, Cannon, who is also a singer/songwriter, appeared in Honeysuckle Rose (1980) with Willie Nelson, Coast to Coast (1980) with Robert Blake, Author! Author! (1982) with Al Pacino, and Sidney Lumet's Deathtrap (1982) with Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve. She starred in the TV movie Having It All (1982) as well as a miniseries, Master of the Game (1984), then had the title role in Jenny's War (1985). After making Rock 'n' Roll Mom (1988) for Disney, she appeared with an ensemble cast in Caddyshack II (1988). In addition, she co-wrote the title track for Chaka Khan's album, The Woman I Am, with Brenda Russell. For her contributions to the film industry, Cannon was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1983 with a motion pictures star located at 6608 Hollywood Boulevard.

Later work

Cannon wrote, directed, and starred in the semi-autobiographical film The End of Innocence (1990). She subsequently appeared opposite Phylicia Rashad in Jailbirds (1991) and Kris Kristofferson and Tony Curtis in Christmas in Connecticut (1992), the latter of which was directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, before reuniting with Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice director Paul Mazursky for The Pickle (1993), alongside Danny Aiello. Cannon had guest roles on the popular television shows Diagnosis: Murder and The Practice, as well as being a semi-regular on Ally McBeal. In 1997 she could be seen in three major studio film releases: 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag with Joe Pesci; a remake of That Darn Cat; and Out to Sea with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. Also that year, she worked with Sarah Michelle Gellar in the TV movie Beverly Hills Family Robinson. In 2001 and 2002, she had a regular part in the TV series Three Sisters. Cannon and Christopher Walken were reunited for Kangaroo Jack (2003), but her performance was cut down to a walk-on in the final version of the film. In 2005, she appeared in Boynton Beach Club, a movie about aging Floridians who have just lost their spouses; Cannon's real-life ex Michael Nouri played her love interest. Her later roles included A Kiss at Midnight (2008) for Hallmark and the unaired pilot Women Without Men (2010) with Lorraine Bracco and Penny Marshall. She wrote and directed another short, Unleashed (2010). Cannon returned to the stage to star in a 2013 production of Ken Ludwig's The Fox on the Fairway in Overland Park, Kansas. After a hiatus from the screen, she acted in the equestrian themed family film Hope's Legacy (2021). Forgoing its scheduled opening at Baltimore's Senator Theatre due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film was instead released to streaming platforms. Cannon published a bestselling memoir, Dear Cary: My Life with Cary Grant, in 2011. She had previously been approached by Swifty Lazar to write about her late ex-husband in 1986, turning down "millions," and declined another publishing offer some years later from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, stating that there was still healing that needed to happen. Cannon serves as executive producer of a four-part miniseries based on her book, entitled Archie, which premiered on BritBox in 2023 and stars Jason Isaacs as Grant and Laura Aikman as Cannon.

Personal life

In 1961, Cannon began dating actor Cary Grant, who was 33 years her senior. They married on July 22, 1965, and had one daughter, Jennifer (b. February 26, 1966). Cannon filed for divorce in September 1967, and it was finalized on March 21, 1968. Cannon married a second time on April 18, 1985, to lawyer-turned-real estate investor Stanley Fimberg. They divorced in 1991. In 2024, Cannon said she and Fimberg are still friends. Cannon has also been in relationships with comedian Mort Sahl, talent agent Ron Weisner and sculptor Carl Hartman, as well as producers Murray Shostak and Leonard Rabinowitz, directors Hal Ashby and Jerry Schatzberg, and actors Armand Assante, Hy Chase, Ron Ely and Michael Nouri. She remains friendly with Nouri and accompanied him to a premiere four decades after their breakup. Cannon has often collaborated with her significant others on film and TV projects. Shostak and Rabinowitz produced her starring vehicles Child Under a Leaf and The End of Innocence respectively; Schatzberg directed her in Honeysuckle Rose; Assante and Nouri were her leading men in Lady of the House and Boynton Beach Club respectively; and she guest-starred on Ely's series Malibu Run. In 1972, Cannon revealed that she engaged in primal therapy. She also dabbled in metaphysics and got kicked out of Esalen. A longtime fixture at Los Angeles Lakers games, she is considered the team's second-most-famous fan behind Jack Nicholson. She is a born-again Christian.

Philanthropy

Cannon's experience as a single mother led to her becoming national spokeswoman for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, which provides emotional support and companionship for children of one-parent homes. She paid for the tombstone of slain runaway Alyssa Margie "Raven" Gomez, whom she'd met while making a documentary about homelessness. Cannon has used her celebrity to benefit other charitable organizations, such as Special Olympics, for mentally and physically disabled athletes. For 12 years, she hosted God's Party, a bi-weekly Bible study held at Radford Studio Center.

Filmography

Stage

Footnotes