Thanks for visiting my website!  I get lots of inquiries about my history and career - I hope this page will serve to answer some of your questions.

I am the youngest of eight children born to Joseph and Dorothy Kozak, an attorney and a music teacher in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. When Joe died a year after my birth, Mom packed up the children and moved first to North Dakota and then to Nebraska, to teach at the University in Lincoln.

The theatre has always played an important role in my life.  My first stage appearance was at age five in a college opera production of Dido and Aneas.  In the fourth grade, I broke gender barriers playing the title character in Benjamin Franklin. The following year I discovered the joys of nepotism, performing frequently on the educational TV show, Music With Mrs. Kozak.

In high school you could find me tap dancing with the Nebraska Repertory Theater, and the summer after my senior year, I managed to support myself full-time with a whopping $55-a-week paycheck earned playing Indian Maiden #2 in The Legend of Daniel Boone in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

With thirty-something plays under my belt, I headed for the Big Apple, and into the professional acting program at NYU's School of the Arts (now Tisch School of the Arts).  After completing the program, I was cast in the feature film The House on Sorority Row.   Saying goodbye to a decade of waitressing, my television and film career took off.  

After a series of primary roles in daytime dramas - Texas, Guiding Light and Santa Barbara - my soap career came to a smashing halt when my character (a nun) was crushed to death by the giant neon letter "C".  Taking this as a sign that I might have a career in Hollywood (where giant letters grace major hillsides) I moved to LA, and have been fortunate enough to star in a number of feature films and prime time television programs. 

Movies

• Dark Planet
• A Friend's Betrayal
• Magic In The Water
• The Favor
• Taking of Beverly Hills
• All I Want for Christmas
• Necessary Roughness
• Arachnophobia
• When Harry Met Sally
• Parenthood
• The House on Sorority Row

Prime time TV series

• Knightwatch
• Harts of the West
• Bringing Up Jack
• Charlie Grace
• You Wish

TV movies:

• The Amy Fisher Story
• So Proudly We Hail 
• Unforgivable
• A Friend's Betrayal
• Unforgiveable
• Emma's Wish
• The Android Affair 
• Titanic, the miniseries

Theatre (leading roles)

• The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• The Seagull
• Twelfth Night
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
• A Streetcar Named Desire
• Love Letters
• Man of the Moment
• Lost in Yonkers
• Born Yesterday

Currently, I am working on more books in the Wollie Shelley series.  I still live in California with my family, two mischievious dogs and the memory of a beloved cat.