Ann Jillian (born Ann Jura Nauseda on January 29, 1950 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) is an American actress born to Roman Catholic Lithuanian immigrant parents.
Jillian has been acting since 1961 when she played "Little Bo Peep" in the Disney film, Babes In Toyland. She appeared in the Rosalind Russell- Natalie Wood 1962 movie version of Gypsy. She later became a regular on the 1960s sitcom Hazel, appeared in The Twilight Zone episode Mute as the mute telepathic Ilse Nielson in 1963, and did voice acting for Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and Sealab 2020 in the early 1970s.
She is best known for her early 1980s series It's a Living, a sitcom that elevated Jillian to sex symbol status. She was last signed into this series and received last place billing. During her time on the series for the ABC run, she portrayed Mae West in a made-for-TV film. When the series was revived in syndication, Ann returned for a season, but then departed because of health problems.
Jillian appeared in more than 25 films, mostly for TV. She also starred in two short-lived sitcoms, an early 1980s effort entitled Jennifer Slept Here in which she played a ghost in a variation of The Ghost & Mrs. Muir and a 1989 series entitled, simply, Ann Jillian.
Jillian married Andy Murcia, a Chicago police sergeant, in 1977 and shortly thereafter Murcia retired to manage his wife's career. Earlier in her career she had been managed by Joyce Selznick. In the mid-1980s, the then 35-year-old actress made headlines when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and she became a vocal advocate for cancer research and prevention. Her own cancer was beaten following a double mastectomy and her battle with the disease was chronicled in the top-rated 1988 made-for-TV film, The Ann Jillian Story in which Jillian portrayed herself.
Jillian has continued to act and had a son in 1992. Her TV and film credits have been sporadic since the late 1990s, as she decided to devote herself to raising her son Andrew Joseph and to promoting breast cancer issues. Today, she mostly works as a motivational speaker and also performs as a singer in corporate and symphony pops circles. Ann, husband and son reside in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles.
Following the death of her fire-fighter husband, housewife Anne McNeil decides to move from New York to the small California town of Marvel, where she and her husband spent their honeymoon. Anne's daughter Lucy is resistant to the idea of leaving her home city, but she eventually begins to adjust to her new surroundings and makes friends. Anne also has some adjusting to do as she starts a new job a small gift shop. Written by Jean-Marc Rocher
Speaks Lithuanian fluently.
Her parents fled from Lithuania on bicycles in 1944 during the second Soviet occupation.
In 1990, "Good Housekeeping" magazine named Ann one of the most admired women of the world.
Ann obtained a scholarship to the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, which gave her chance to study acting and music with some of the finest teachers in the country.
In 1979, was a huge hit on Broadway in "Sugar Babies" with Mickey Rooney (I) and Ann Miller (I).
In 1985, at the age of 35, Ann was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. She battled the disease courageously and successfully.
Ann gave birth to her first child, a son, Andrew Joseph Nauseda H. Murcia, on February 3, 1992.
Ann is a three-time Emmy Nominee and Golden Globe-award-winning actress (she won the Best Actress Golden Globe for her TV movie, Ann Jillian Story, The (1988) (TV) which was the highest-rated television movie of the 1987-88 season).
Future husband (and then-policeman) Andy Murcia pretended to be gay when he and Ann first met, so she wouldn't think he was just another man trying to pick her up.
