Jenny O’Hara

Biography

Patricia Joanne “Jenny” O’Hara is an American film, television and stage actress.

She spent a year at Carnegie Tech (now part of Carnegie-Mellon University) in Pittsburgh and a summer playing in stock theater, and then came to New York to study with Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner. In the 1960s she appeared in the dramatic play Dylan opposite Sir Alec Guinness, and in the short-lived musical The Fig Leaves Are Falling with Dorothy Loudon.

In 1970, O’Hara succeeded her younger sister, Jill (who had been nominated for a Tony Award) in the musical Promises, Promises. By the mid-1970s, Edith O’Hara was running the 13th Street Theatre in Greenwich Village (a major venue for off-off-Broadway and children’s theater), and her brother Jack was in London, playing guitar and bass and singing with the band Eggs Over Easy, pioneering the pub rock scene in England. She graduated to television, both in series and made-for-TV features, including starring roles in: Brinks: The Great Robbery, The Return of the World’s Greatest Detective, Blind Ambition and Blinded by the Light with Kristy McNichol.

She later worked in movies such as Career Opportunities, A Mother’s Prayer, Mystic River, Matchstick Men, Extract and Devil, was part of the ensemble cast for the first season of The Facts of Life and the entire run of My Sister Sam, and had guest roles on television series such as Kojak, Charlie’s Angels, Quinn Martin’s Tales of the Unexpected (known in the United Kingdom as Twist in the Tale), Barney Miller, Law & Order, The X-Files, Beverly Hills, 90210, NYPD Blue, ER, CHiPs, House M.D., “Boston Legal”, Reba, Six Feet Under, and Big Love. She has also made appearances over the years on various TV game shows.

She had a recurring role as Doug Heffernan’s mother, Janet Heffernan, on the 1998–2007 sitcom The King of Queens. She also had roles in the 2009 film, Extract, and the 2010 horror film, Devil.