Ellen Albertini Dow (born November 16, 1918) is an American character actress. She often portrays feisty old ladies and is perhaps best known as the rapping grandmother who performs in the feature film The Wedding Singer. She also played a disillusioned, homophobic grandmother (much to the dismay of her gay grandson) in Wedding Crashers and a victim of Christopher Lloyd's slapstick in Radioland Murders.
Albertini Dow was born Ellen Albertini in M...
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Ellen Albertini Dow (born November 16, 1918) is an American character actress. She often portrays feisty old ladies and is perhaps best known as the rapping grandmother who performs in the feature film The Wedding Singer. She also played a disillusioned, homophobic grandmother (much to the dismay of her gay grandson) in Wedding Crashers and a victim of Christopher Lloyd's slapstick in Radioland Murders.
Albertini Dow was born Ellen Albertini in Mt. Carmel, Pennsylvania, the seventh child of immigrant parents, a car dealership owner father and a mother also named Ellen. She started studying dance and piano at age 5. She obtained a B.A. and M.A. in theatre from Cornell University, where she was a member of Kappa Delta Sorority. She then moved to New York, where she studied and worked with the legendary dance greats Hanya Holm and Martha Graham. She studied acting with Michael Shurtleff and Uta Hagen and worked with the twentieth century’s greatest mimes, Marcel Marceau and Jacques LeCoq...
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