Jayne Houdyshell
American actress
Jayne Houdyshell (born September 25, 1953) is an American actress. Known for being a prolific character actor in theatre, film, and television, Houdyshell has received numerous accolades, including a Tony Award, two Obie Awards, and a Drama Desk Award.
She made her Broadway debut in the musical A Wonderful Life (2005). She went on to receive the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for The Humans (2016). She was Tony-nominated for her roles in the Lisa Kron play Well (2006), the revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies (2012), the new play by Lucas Hnath A Doll's House, Part 2 (2017), and the revival of Meredith Willson's The Music Man (2022).
She is also known for her supporting film roles in Alexander Payne's science fiction comedy Downsizing (2017) and Greta Gerwig's period piece Little Women, and for reprising her role in the 2021 film adaptation of The Humans. She has had recurring roles in various television series, including Third Watch, Law & Order, Blue Bloods, and The Good Fight. She starred as "Bunny Folger" on the hit Hulu comedy series Only Murders in the Building, for which she was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy Series.
Early life and education
Raised in Topeka, Kansas, she is the youngest of four daughters born to Galen "Buzz" Houdyshell and Louella Taylor. She graduated from Topeka High School in 1971, and she went on to Emporia State University then on to graduate with honors from the Academy of Dramatic Art at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan in 1974.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Jayne Houdyshell” as american actress. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american actress. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6167882. VIAF identifies the subject as 108058753. The Library of Congress control number is no2010042189. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 2005, 2016 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jayne Houdyshell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.