The Brilliant Work of Actress Lilly Dennis
If you asked Lilly Dennis how long she’s been acting, she might tell you that she’s been an actress all her life. And that would be the truth. When she was just a young girl in Tasmania, she would put on her own shows for her family and friends. When people asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up the answer was always the same and without any hesitation: “I’m going to be an actress.” She knew early on that there was nothing in the world she wanted to do more than acting and luckily, for her and for us, her parents supported her in her quest.
She started taking acting classes when she was ten years old and got a great part in a national theatrical production in Australia of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream when she was eleven. That role, on that stage, at that particular time cemented and confirmed her view of what she was going to do for the rest of her life. Her education continued at the Collegiate School of Performing Arts in Australia and she finished her degree in acting at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles.
Lilly has a wide range of skills that allow her to be a truly believable serious actress or a top of the line comic performer. She shines in every role she plays and we have enjoyed them all. Her performance in Cancer's Last Stand where she played Poppy Lockhart a woman who is a three time cancer survivor, fatally diagnosed with a brain tumor, was nothing less than brilliant –and her excellent comedy timing seems to come naturally and as a kid she would come home and watch Fawlty Towers with john Cleese, who she says was one of her biggest comedy influences when she was growing up. Later on, she told us that Lucille Ball became the major influence for every character Lilly took on and for everything she would write. Lilly was impressed not only with Ms. Ball’s enormous talent but also with her business acumen as a producer and owner and head of her own Hollywood studio.
Lilly has acted in too many projects to name them all here but we would like to at least mention that one of her biggest achievements was her one-person show Chocoholic. It recently received the Best Solo Show Award in The United Solo Theater Festival Awards. It was directed by the award winning Debra Deliso and written by none other than Lilly herself. Chocoholic also appeared on Broadway this past year and will begin touring in Los Angeles and the east coast in the very near future.
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