| The daughter of Mark Miller, an actor best known for his starring role
on the mid-1960s TV sitcom Please Don't Eat the Daisies, actress Penelope
Ann Miller was born in California and raised in Texas. After a year of
attending Menlo College, Miller dropped out to train with acting coach
Herbert Berghof. Her first role of note was as ditsy ingenue Daisy in the
Neil Simon Broadway comedy Biloxi Blues, a role she would later recreate
in the film version. For her role in Our Town she was nominated for a Tony
award in 1989. In 1987, the blonde, saucer-eyed actress made her film
debut in the wacked-out comedy Adventures in Babysitting, after which she
costarred with popular leading men ranging from Pee-Wee Herman (Big Top
Pee-Wee [1988]) to Al Pacino (Carlito's Way [1993]). Some of Miller's best
known film roles have included that of Marlon Brando's enigmatic daughter
in The Freshman (1990), a brief turn as silent film actress Edna Purviance
in Chaplin (1992), and the svelte 1930s pulp heroine Margot Lane in The
Shadow (1994). |