Mimi Cozzens

Mimi Cozzens enjoyed a well-rounded career on stage, screen and television in a career that has stretched for more than four decades. She was born Mildred Gloria Cozzens in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Glendale, Queens. Of Irish and English extraction, she was one of two daughters born to Milton (Jeff) Cozzens, a Dean of Boys and track coach at Clark Junior High School in the South Bronx and the Police Athletic League, and Dorothy (Pitt) Cozzens, Dean and owner of NYC's Academy of Professional Children in the late 1940s. She and her sister Dorothy Faith were employed as child models for the John Robert Powers Agency in NYC (Mimi was 3-1/2 when she booked her first job). Her interest in performing was sparked and sustained after she sang and danced on a local TV show called "Teen Topper Revue". Graduating from Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens, New York, she studied at Emerson College in the early 1950s before subsequently receiving her Bachelor of Arts in Speech/Drama with a minor in Broadcasting from Hofstra College. A veteran of the theatre, Mimi enjoyed a wide range of roles over the course of her extensive career -- from comedy ("Born Yesterday", "Goodbye Charlie", "The Man Who Came to Dinner") to drama ("The Last of Mrs. Lincoln", "Children of A Lesser God") to musicals ("Guys and Dolls") to Shakespeare and the classics ("The Comedy of Errors", "A Month in the Country"). She made her Broadway debut in Neil Simon's "I Ought to Be in Pictures", directed by Herbert Ross when she went on for Joyce Van Patten. Her national tours include "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" and "Same Time, Next Year", as well as the original Los Angeles tour of "Tribute" starring Jack Lemmon. While cast in such New York stage productions as "Her Majesty the King" and "I Could Have Been a Kennedy", she earned distinction as an awarding-winning actress on the West Coast, winning a Dramalogue Award for her work in "After the Fall" (directed by Harris Yulin), an L.A. Weekly Award for her performance in "The Front Room" at Theatre East, and an ADA Award for "Only the Dead Know Burbank" at Actors Alley. Later, she appeared in "Agnes of God" (as the Mother Superior) and "The Dinosaur Within" (as Miss Wells, an aging movie star), both directed by Michael Michetti. A sturdy utilitarian player, she played various mothers, teachers, judges, nurses and waitresses throughout the course of her career, dividing her time between film and TV assignments. As to the former, she made appearances in Spring Break (1983), Night of the Cyclone (1990), Live Wire (1992), The Pandora Project (1998) and, more recently, Dead Ronnie (2006), the award-winning short Dandelion Dharma (2009), What Would Jesus Do? (2010), Christmas Mail (2010), Mardi Gras: Spring Break (2011) and the forthcoming The Master (2012). On the small screen, she had guest/co-star roles on such sitcoms as "The Jeffersons", "Seinfeld", "The Drew Carey Show", "3rd Rock from the Sun", "Malcolm in the Middle", "The Golden Girls", "Will & Grace", "Work It", "One Big Family" (starring Danny Thomas) and "Carol & Company" (starring Carol Burnett). Dramatic series work include dramas such as "Police Story", "Knot's Landing", "Columbo", "St. Elsewhere", "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (as a 120-year-old Romulon waitress!), "Providence", "Chicago Hope", "The Practice", "Cold Case", and "Numb3rs". Commercially, she pitched everything from detergents and fabric softeners to cough syrups and headache medicines. A long-time union activist who has served on the National Board of Directors of both SAG and AFTRA, she Mimi was involved in the historic vote to merge the two unions in 2012.