Danica D'Hondt

Danica d'Hondt was born in London, England, of an Irish mother and a Belgian father. Originally an actress, Danica soon found that she had a natural talent as a theatre director, a role not easily accepted for women at that time. She began her career at the age of nine by appearing in a movie at Shepperton Studios in England. She worked in radio, TV and on stage in Canada, where her family emigrated while she was still in school. She graduated from High School in Montreal, and returned to England after attending the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She worked as a stage actress in London, also performing in radio and TV dramas for the BBC, and then relocated to Toronto, Canada, where she became a CBC-TV game show personality and a talk show host at an unusually early age, interviewing celebrities such as Broadway actress/dancer Gwen Verdon and the late Jazz great Dizzy Gillespie. She also appeared on TV shows out of New York City, and in summer stock theatre in New York and Illinois. She starred with comic Harvey Korman in Living Venus (1961), a film shot in Chicago in 1960. Danica's Hollywood career spans the years from 1960 to 1990, during which time she starred in "B" movies, played supporting roles in major Hollywood movies, and performed guest-starring roles on such popular TV shows of the time as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964); The Wild Wild West (1965) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964). Naively, she turned down the role of "Ginger" in Gilligan's Island (1964). She left Hollywood from 1966 to 1971, during which time she worked as a theatre director in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she also wrote for a magazine, produced educational films and taught acting at her own school, "The Actor's Lab", on Sacramento Street. Upon her return to Hollywood, in 1971, she directed several very successful stage productions, worked as a writer and associate producer in film and television, and did a stint as a television journalist, becoming the Consumer and Financial Reporter to a syndicated daytime magazine show called "Breakaway". Relocating to Northern California in the 1990s, Danica has been occupied with several businesses she runs with her husband and is active in real estate investing. She has been busy as a writer with two non-fiction books published, and several others in the works. After Dan Brown's success, she wants to attempt a novel. In between the variety of career changes, Danica has been busy raising a family of six children. She currently lives with her husband on a small farm in the Sierra Foothills, where she writes, teaches, and helps her winemaker husband tend their vineyard. The couple also owns a large restaurant and banquet facility in Placerville, California, named "Sequoia".