Oakwood-raised Oscar nominee featured in Forbes, New York Times and more

Credit: Joel C Ryan

Credit: Joel C Ryan

Allison Janney was far from the “It Girl” when she started her acting career.

With a long list of film and television roles under her belt, the Oscar contender and Dayton Hall Walk of fame inductee is certainly the “It Woman” now.

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Favored to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as LaVona Golden being pinched by a bird in “I, Tonya,” the Oakwood-raised actress has been featured by nearly every major American news organization in recent weeks. Below are just three examples.

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Janney dropped several nuggets about her upbringing in dayton during her interview with Forbes contributor Russ Espinoza.

"It was two brothers growing up in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio, in a house built by my great grandfather in 1911. A beautiful, big ole brick house with a golden retriever and bunny rabbits and cats and kittens and a menagerie of pets; and brothers who would take my Barbie dolls and take their heads off and make them watch their bodies drown in the sink—and do brotherly things and, you know, hold my legs and arms down and spit on my face and we'd cry and scream. We were all 18 months apart so we were all growing up together and being mean to each other and going to a really small private school called the Miami Valley School in Ohio that was first-through-12th grade—under 300 kids, so a really small school. I don't think I had a date until I was in college because I went to such a small school. No one really dated. We all just hung out together.

Then I did plays: And my first play was playing Noah Claypole, the undertaker's son, in "Oliver;" that was my first performance as a young actress. And just doing plays, playing field hockey, going to ballet. I had a pretty happy childhood in Dayton, Ohio. (It was) a pretty, lovely, bucolic setting and pretty beautiful."

She told the New York Times that playing Golden, who actually was interviewed wearing a fur coat with a bird on her shoulder, was right up her alley.

Credit: Entertainment Weekly

Credit: Entertainment Weekly

The more complicated and twisted the role, the more fun it is to play for me. I love making sense of a hot mess, you know? It's a lot of fun. It was hard to try to find humanity for [Ms. Golden], it was really hard. But I have empathy for her. I know that she had to come from a terrible environment.

Following her BAFTA Award for her role in “I, Tonya” in London, the star of CBS’s “Mom” met Prince William and his very pregnant wife, Kate Middleton, at the Royal Albert Hall.

She told James Corden about it on his show, “The Late Late Show with James Corden.”

"I did meet Kate and William and she was in her heels and pregnant, so I felt like a bit of a wimp that I was there in my bare feet."

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