Dee Wallace is perhaps best known for her role as Mary Taylor, the mother in the blockbuster film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, as well as her starring roles in horror films including The Hills Have Eyes, The Howling, Cujo and Critters.
She was born in Kansas City, Kansas, attending the University of Kansas and obtaining an education degree. She briefly taught high school drama at Washington High School in her native Kansas City, before beginning her acting career on TV, in episodes of The Streets of San Francisco, Starsky & Hutch and Police Woman. Her breakout role was in the box-office horror hit The Hills Have Eyes. She had a leading role in The Howling opposite her husband Christopher Stone. They later starred together in Cujo based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name.
In 1982, Dee starred in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The film became the highest-grossing film of all time—a record held for eleven years until Jurassic Park, another Spielberg-directed film, surpassed it. She received a Saturn Award nomination for her performance. She also starred in a number of comedy movies, including 10, Jimmy the Kid and Secret Admirer. She blended her favoured genres with the horror comedies Critters & Critters Attack! She has also appeared in many other horror films, most notably Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners.
On television, Dee played lead roles on the sitcom Together We Stand and the family drama The New Lassie. She guest-starred on a number of shows, including The Twilight Zone; Hotel; Murder, She Wrote; Touched by an Angel; Bones; Grey’s Anatomy; My Name Is Earl; Criminal Minds; and The Office. More recently she was cast on the soap opera General Hospital, as Patricia Spencer, the long-lost older sister of Luke and Bobbie Spencer, and featured on Supernatural.
Dee is a public speaker and self-help author, having written three books, and has her own call-in radio show where she talks exclusively about the creation of “self”. She often speaks about how you can get through tough times with determination and love. She has also written a book called Bright Light about her life lessons from an acting career.