Deborah Rush

Delightfully offbeat, redheaded comedic actress Deborah Rush, from theater, films and TV, was born on April 10, 1954, in Chatham, New Jersey and developed an early interest in making people laugh as a child. Following high school, she decided to pursue acting headfirst, apprenticing with the Play-House of the Ridiculous comedy troupe for starters. She headed for New York and made her Broadway debut in the Tony-winning musical "Dance with Me" (1975) which ran nearly a year. Later in the decade she appeared winningly in a number of New York Shakespeare productions for Joseph Papp including "The Misanthrope," "All's Well That Ends Well" and as Bianca to Meryl Streep's Katherine and Raul Julia's Petruchio in "The Taming of the Shrew." She also understudied Streep as Alice in Papp's "Alice in Concert" musical, based on the popular Lewis Carroll character. Film and TV began coming Deborah's way in the late 1970s, making her movie debut in a bit part in Oliver's Story (1978), the wan remake