Alley Mills

Alley Mills* (Claire Ganz) is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of the First Class of Women at Yale and earned her Masters in Acting at the London Academy of Dramatic Art. She began her professional acting career at the age of 15, being cast at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Iphigenia with Olympia Dukakis. She spent the next four seasons at Williamstown playing roles like Susan Walker in ONCE IN A LIFETIME with Ken Howard, and Nancy Stoddard in COUNTRY GIRL with James Naughton. While still in college, she was cast in the feature film DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE playing a cameo opposite Frank Langella. After Drama School, she went to NY, where she was cast at Joe Papp’s NY Shakespeare Festival in A COLLIERS FRIDAY NIGHT with Geraldine Fitzgerald and then embarked on a yearlong national tour of ROMEO AND JULIET playing Juliet. She ended up in LA where she did a six-month run of the play VOICES with Sally Kirkland. From that play, she was cast in her first television series, James L Brooks’ THE ASSOCIATES, starring opposite Martin Short. She went on to star in numerous TV series and pilots with actors George Hamilton (POOR RICHARD), Richard Dysart (THE BUREAU), James Naughton and George Wendt (MAKING THE GRADE), Hal Linden (2ND EDITION), George C Scott (Mr. President) and others. And she also played many recurring roles on series like HILLSTREET BLUES, SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH, and YES DEAR.

When Alley was in her mid-thirties, she landed the role she is perhaps best known for, Norma Arnold in the WONDER YEARS. She met her husband and love of her life, actor Orson Bean, just as the Wonder Years was ending, and later joined him on DR QUINN MEDICINE woman playing Jane Seymour’s sister Marjorie. Alley also appeared in several feature films, starring opposite John Candy in GOING BESERK, with Fran Drescher in YOUNG LUST, and the Indie movies John Cusack’s NEVER GET OTTA THE BOAT, JANE WHITE IS SICK AND TWISTED and LAST CHANCE CHARLENE. Alley continued throughout her career to act in live theater, her first love, at the Mark Taper Forum (SAYS I SAYS HE opposite Brian Dennehey), at the ACT in San Francisco (GLORY HALLELUJAH with Michael Learned) and numerous plays all over LA including 30 years at a Company she and her husband belonged to in Venice, The Pacific Resident Theater.

For the past 16 years, she has been playing bipolar baddie Pamela Douglas on THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL on CBS-TV and these past two years has had the great fun to play wacko serial killer and convict Heather Webber on GENERAL HOSPITAL, for which she won the Daytime Emmy last year.