Ann Jillian (born Ann Jura Nauseda; January 29, 1950)
is an American former actress and singer whose career began as a
child actress in 1960. She is best known for her role as the sultry waitress Cassie Cranston on the 1980s sitcom ''
It's a Living
''It's a Living'' (renamed ''Making a Living'' for Season 2) is an American Ensemble cast, ensemble sitcom television series set in a restaurant at the top of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. The show aired on Ame ...
''.
Early life and career
Jillian was born in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...
, in 1950 to
Lithuanian immigrant parents Juozas and Margarita Nausėda (later George and Margaret Nauseda) and speaks
Lithuanian fluently. Jillian was raised as a devout
Roman Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
.
She began her career as a child actress in 1960 when she played Little Bo Peep in the
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...
film ''
Babes in Toyland''. Jillian appeared as Dainty June in the
Rosalind Russell-
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood (née Zacharenko; July 20, 1938 – November 29, 1981) was an American actress. She began acting at age four and co-starred at age eight in ''Miracle on 34th Street'' (1947). As a teenager, she was nominated for an Academy Award f ...
movie version of ''
Gypsy
{{Infobox ethnic group
, group = Romani people
, image =
, image_caption =
, flag = Roma flag.svg
, flag_caption = Romani flag created in 1933 and accepted at the 1971 World Romani Congress
, po ...
'' (1962). She had several television appearances in the 1960s and 1970s, becoming a regular on the 1960s
sitcom
A sitcom (short for situation comedy or situational comedy) is a genre of comedy produced for radio and television, that centers on a recurring cast of character (arts), characters as they navigate humorous situations within a consistent settin ...
''
Hazel
Hazels are plants of the genus ''Corylus'' of deciduous trees and large shrubs native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The genus is usually placed in the birch family, Betulaceae,Germplasmgobills Information Network''Corylus''Rushforth, K ...
'' (1965-66 season) and appearing in the 1963 ''
Twilight Zone'' episode "
Mute" (where she was given screen credit as "Ann Jilliann") as the mute telepath Ilse Nielson. In 1983, Jillian was honored by the
Young Artist Foundation with its
Former Child Star "Lifetime Achievement" Award, recognizing her achievements within the entertainment industry as a child actress.
Jillian moved on to
voice roles, for ''
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!'' and ''
Sealab 2020'' in the early 1970s, but — told she was too old to play youthful roles of the day and too young to play a leading lady — there was no more work for her in Hollywood. She took a department store job and studied psychology, but heeded the advice of casting director Hoyt Bowers and
Walt Disney
Walter Elias Disney ( ; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the Golden age of American animation, American animation industry, he introduced several develop ...
, who had told her, "Whatever you do, keep working at your craft".
Jillian married Andy Murcia, a Chicago police sergeant, on March 27, 1978, and shortly thereafter Murcia retired to manage his wife's career.
In the late 1970s, she toured in musical comedies, including
Sammy Cahn
Samuel Cohen (June 18, 1913 – January 15, 1993), known professionally as Sammy Cahn, was an American lyricist, songwriter, and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premie ...
's ''Words and Music''. After appearing with
Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney (born Ninnian Joseph Yule Jr.; other pseudonym Mickey Maguire; September 23, 1920 – April 6, 2014) was an American actor. In a career spanning nearly nine decades, he appeared in more than 300 films and was among the last survivi ...
in the play ''Goodnight Ladies'' in Chicago, the producers cast Jillian to appear in the original company of ''
Sugar Babies'' on
Broadway with Rooney and
Ann Miller in 1979.
She also starred in ''
I Love My Wife'' at the
Drury Lane Theatre in Chicago.
1980s fame
Jillian appeared in more than 25 films, mostly for television. Though she had nearly two decades' worth of film and television credits already, she first came to national prominence in the 1980s series ''
It's a Living
''It's a Living'' (renamed ''Making a Living'' for Season 2) is an American Ensemble cast, ensemble sitcom television series set in a restaurant at the top of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. The show aired on Ame ...
'',
[ a sitcom that elevated Jillian to sex symbol status in 1980. She was the last to be signed onto this series and received last place billing. The sitcom aired for two seasons on ABC before being cancelled due to low ratings and was sold into syndication for the burgeoning ]cable television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...
market. (The show became a surprise success in syndication.) Toward the end of her time on the series for the ABC run, she portrayed Mae West
Mary Jane "Mae" West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress, singer, comedian, screenwriter, and playwright whose career spanned more than seven decades. Recognized as a prominent sex symbol of her time, she was known ...
in a 1982 made-for-television film. Jillian was nominated for a lead actress Emmy and Golden Globe for her performance.
In 1983, she appeared in the John Hughes movie '' Mr. Mom'' with Michael Keaton and Teri Garr
Terry Ann Garr (December 11, 1944 – October 29, 2024), known as Teri Garr, was an American actress. Known for her comedic roles in film and television in the 1970s and 1980s, she often played women struggling to cope with the life-changing ex ...
. The same year, she appeared in the miniseries '' Malibu'', starring Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint and James Coburn
James Harrison Coburn III (August 31, 1928 – November 18, 2002) was an American film and television actor who was featured in more than 70 films, largely action roles, and made 100 television appearances during a 45-year career.AllmoviBi ...
. That fall she starred in her own sitcom, '' Jennifer Slept Here'', a variation on '' The Ghost & Mrs. Muir'', with Jillian as the apparition in question. ''Jennifer Slept Here'' ended in 1984, enabling her to take a role in the miniseries ''Ellis Island
Ellis Island is an island in New York Harbor, within the U.S. states of New Jersey and New York (state), New York. Owned by the U.S. government, Ellis Island was once the busiest immigrant inspection and processing station in the United State ...
''. Dunaway and Vereen were nominated for Golden Globe Awards, and Jillian and Burton were nominated for Emmy Awards.
Bob Hope
Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was an American comedian, actor, entertainer and producer with a career that spanned nearly 80 years and achievements in vaudeville, network radio, television, and USO Tours. He appeared ...
selected her to appear in six of his television specials, including two, entertaining U.S. troops stationed in Beirut (1984) and Saudi Arabia (1991). She displayed her athletic abilities on three '' Battle of the Network Stars'' specials and a '' Circus of the Stars'' special, and appeared in the charity extravaganza ''Night of 100 Stars''. She guest starred in television specials for Don Rickles
Donald Jay Rickles (May 8, 1926 – April 6, 2017) was an American stand-up comedian and actor. He was known primarily for his insult comedy. His film roles include ''Run Silent, Run Deep (film), Run Silent, Run Deep'' (1958), ''Enter Laughing ...
(1986) and David Copperfield
''David Copperfield''Dickens invented over 14 variations of the title for this work; see is a novel by English author Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from infancy to matur ...
(1987) and was on the dais at The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast for Mr. T
Laurence T (born Laurence Tureaud; May 21, 1952), known professionally as Mr. T, is an American actor and retired Professional wrestling, professional wrestler. He is known for his roles as B. A. Baracus in the 1980s television series ''The A ...
(1984). In 1985, she played The Red Queen to Carol Channing's White Queen in an all-star television musical adaptation of Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and reluctant Anglicanism, Anglican deacon. His most notable works are ''Alice ...
's ''Alice in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (also known as ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English Children's literature, children's novel by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics university don, don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a ...
''. The same year, the producers of ''It's a Living'' made the relatively unheard-of decision to resume production of the series, by then three years off the air, for first-run syndication
Broadcast syndication is the practice of content owners leasing the right to broadcast their content to other television stations or radio stations, without having an official broadcast network to air it on. It is common in the United States whe ...
, and Jillian was contractually obligated to return to the series. In 1986, she played identical twins in ''The Killer In The Mirror'', a loose remake of the 1964 Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (; April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television, and theater. Regarded as one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood history, she was noted for her willingness to play unsympatheti ...
movie '' Dead Ringer''. She later starred on the namesake series '' Ann Jillian'', which aired 13 episodes on NBC during the 1989–90 season. In 1994, she played the mother of an unborn child with a heart defect in ''Heart of a Child''.
Personal life
Family and later work
Jillian gave birth to her only child, a son, Andrew Joseph Murcia, in 1992. She continued to act, with ten TV movie roles throughout the 1990s, although her television and film credits became sporadic since the late 1990s, as she decided to devote herself to raising her son and to promoting breast cancer issues.
On September 12, 2015, Jillian was inducted into the National Lithuanian American Hall of Fame.
Cancer
Before resuming production on ''It's a Living'' in 1985, Jillian (then 35) made headlines when she was diagnosed with breast cancer
Breast cancer is a cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a Breast lump, lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, Milk-rejection sign, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipp ...
, and she became a vocal advocate for cancer research and prevention. Leaving ''It's a Living'' after the 1985–86 season, she focused on beating her cancer, with treatment including a double mastectomy
Mastectomy is the medical term for the surgical removal of one or both breasts, partially or completely. A mastectomy is usually carried out to treat breast cancer. In some cases, women believed to be at high risk of breast cancer choose to have ...
. Her battle with cancer was chronicled in the top-rated made-for-TV film, ''The Ann Jillian Story
''The Ann Jillian Story'' is a 1988 made-for-television film.
Overview
The real life story of actress Ann Jillian's struggle with breast cancer.
Accolades
Ann Jillian received her third Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a M ...
'' (1988), in which Jillian portrayed herself. The film required two years to be produced, due to conflicts in tone, the degree of medical information included, and the relatively limited, realistic reaction portrayed by Jillian and her stage husband, before and after her surgery. Jillian received her third Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the year, each with their own set of rules and award categor ...
nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special, and won a 1989 Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Awards are awards presented for excellence in both international film and television. It is an annual award ceremony held since 1944 to honor artists and professionals and their work. The ceremony is normally held every Janua ...
for Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV.
Filmography
See also
* List of people from Massachusetts
References
External links
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Jillian, Ann
1950 births
Living people
Actresses from Cambridge, Massachusetts
American child actresses
American television actresses
American voice actresses
American film actresses
American musical theatre actresses
American people of Lithuanian descent
Best Miniseries or Television Movie Actress Golden Globe winners
Catholics from Massachusetts
20th-century American actresses
21st-century American actresses