Denny Dillon

Dillon has performed on the Broadway stage, appearing as Agnes in the 1974 revival of Gypsy starring Angela Lansbury; in the 1975 revival of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth; in the 1980 stage version of Harold and Maude; and as Mickey in the 1983 Gershwin musical My One and Only, starring Tommy Tune and Twiggy, for which she received a nomination for a Tony Award for Featured Actress in a Musical. She later appeared as a replacement cast member in the 2003 Broadway play Enchanted April.

Dillon had auditioned for the premiere season of SNL in 1975, and though she was passed over by producer Lorne Michaels, she got to perform her "Talent Night at the Convent" act during the show's third episode, broadcast October 25, 1975. She beat out Mercedes Ruehl for the final female cast member slot.

Dillon made her big screen debut in Saturday Night Fever, playing Doreen, who asks John Travolta's character Tony if she can wipe his forehead. Later, she appeared for a short time on Saturday Night Live in 1980-1981 during the troubled tenure of Jean Doumanian. (Dillon was the shortest cast member in Saturday Night Live history at 4'11" (150 cm).) Dillon found more success as Toby Pedalbee, the abusive yet loyal assistant on the HBO cable sitcom Dream On, starting in 1990. She was the voice of Meadow Morn in the 1983 animation The Magic of Herself the Elf. Other television roles include an episode of Night Court entitled "Educating Rhonda" (Dillon). She played Judy on the TV series comedy Dr. Science (1987). In 1994 she portrayed Roseanne Barr in the made-for-TV film Roseanne: An Unauthorized Biography.

In regional theatre, Dillon appeared in the new musical Triumph of Love at Center Stage, Baltimore, Maryland, in December 1996, as one of a "comic trio of clowns". She appeared in the Tennessee Williams plays 8 by Tenn at the Hartford Stage in 2003. Dillon starred as Beatrice in the world premiere of Tom Dudzick's Don't Talk to the Actors at Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo, New York in September 2007. In October - November 2010 she appeared in a new musical in "development", Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach at Goodspeed Musicals in Chester, Connecticut. In January 2012 she stars as Berthe in Boeing-Boeing at Hartford Stage.

In a recent interview with Vulture, Dillon said she is gay and married to a woman named Barbara Smiley. The two were engaged in 1996. Although she was closeted during her time on the show, this ultimately makes her the first lesbian cast member on Saturday Night Live (previously Danitra Vance was considered to be the first overall, while Kate McKinnon was thought to be the first one to be white, though McKinnon is still the first lesbian cast member to be out of the closet at the time of her hiring), the first cast member of the LGBTQ+ community (though Terry Sweeney is still the first openly gay male to be an SNL cast member), and the only LGBTQ+ cast member who didn't work as a cast member for Lorne Michaels.