Linda Dano is a talented American actress with over 55 years of screen experience. She is particularly well known for her years of soap opera roles, most notably that of romance author Felicia Gallant in Another World, which she starred in for 16 years, from 1983 until its final episode in 1999. The role won her the 1993 Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, an award she was nominated for a further three times. She also became the first soap actor to play the same character in four different series, playing Dr Gretel “Rae” Cummings in an ambitious crossover plot that spanned One Life to Live, All My Children, Port Charles, and General Hospital. In 2021, she joined another American soap opera institution, Days of Our Lives, playing Vivian Alamain.
Dano’s acting career began in the late 1960s with appearances in everything from Hello, Dolly! to Ironside. Although she’d first played Rae Cummings in One Life to Live in 1979, it wasn’t until 1983 that she won her first major role, that of Felicia Gallant in Another World. The show, which had been on the air since 1964, made Dano’s name and she appeared in over 1,000 episodes before it was finally cancelled at the close of the century. During her time with the show, she also hosted a talk show called Attitudes, for which she was nominated for yet another Daytime Emmy in 1989.
Having suffered from depression and lost her father to Alzheimer’s disease, Dano is an active advocate for charities that help people with both. The long-running charity, HeartShare Human Services of New York also presents an annual Linda Dano Award.
