Amy Ryan is an American actress of stage and screen. She began her professional stage career in 1987, and made her Broadway debut in 1993. She has received two Tony Award nominations, for her performances in the 2000 revival of Uncle Vanya and the 2005 production of A Streetcar Named Desire. She has also appeared in several television series, including ER, The Naked Truth, Law and Order, and Chicago Hope. In 2016, she won rave reviews for her performance in the Roundabout Theater Company production of Love, Love, Love, earning an Obie Award and Drama Desk and Drama League Award nominations.
She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Theatre Wing, and the New York City Board of Education. She lives in Brooklyn Heights with her husband, actor Slovin, and their children.
Ryan was born Amy Beth Dziewiontkowski in Flushing, Queens, New York City. Her mother, Pamela, was a nurse and her father, John, owned a trucking business. Ryan studied acting at the Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Center in Loch Sheldrake, New York, and graduated from Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts at age 17. She was hired for the national tour of Biloxi Blues straight out of high school, and spent the next decade appearing off-Broadway. She took her mother’s maiden name of Ryan professionally, and used it as the basis for her stage and screen persona.
In the 1990s, she began landing guest appearances on television shows such as As the World Turns, Home Improvement, and ER. She became a series regular on The Naked Truth and later made appearances on NBC’s Law & Order. She starred in the HBO series In Treatment as a therapist, and she has had notable recurring roles on The Office, Daddy’s Home, and Drake Doremus’s improvised comedy Win Win.
She is known for her chameleonic ability to portray an array of characters, from the dorky HR rep Holly Flax on NBC’s The Office to the suburban wife of a philandering husband in Drake Doremus’ improvisational film Breathe In. She acted in Clint Eastwood’s 2008 drama Changeling, and had leading roles in the Philip Seymour Hoffman-directed Jack Goes Boating and 2014’s Oscar-winning Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). Currently, she is starring opposite Michael Keaton and Edward Norton in The Gilded Age for HBO. She will also appear in Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building and HBO’s gender-swapping Broadway revival of Company.