Diana Canova

Early life

Canova was born Diane Canova Rivero in West Palm Beach, Florida to actress and singer Judy Canova and Cuban musician Filberto Rivero. She was raised in the Greater Los Angeles Area, where she graduated from Hollywood High School. Canova later studied acting at Los Angeles City College.

Career

Canova made her television acting debut in a 1974 episode of Happy Days portraying Richie's date who is taller than him. She later guest-starred on episodes of Chico and the Man and Starsky and Hutch and appeared in television films. She then landed the role of the promiscuous Corinne Tate on Soap in 1977, opposite Katherine Helmond as her mother. She remained with the series until 1980 but she and Helmond have remained close friends. In 1979, she made an appearance on Barney Miller as nude dancer/prostitute/graduate student Stephanie Wolf.

Later, in 1980, ABC executives offered Canova her own television series, starring alongside Danny Thomas in I'm a Big Girl Now. The show lasted just one season. She then co-starred on the short-lived CBS sitcom Foot in the Door in 1983. A few years later, she was cast as Sandy Beatty on Throb, a sitcom which was broadcast in syndication from 1986 to 1988. Between 1984 and 1996 she appeared in three episodes of the long-running TV show Murder, She Wrote, including featuring as Maggie McCauley in 1990's "Murder: According to Maggie". In 1993, Canova co-starred in the ABC sitcom Home Free (which also featured Marian Mercer, her co-star from Foot in the Door). Since the mid-1990s, she has mainly done voice work for cartoons in video shorts. In 1995, she played "Jenny" in a revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical Company.

Currently, Canova works as an adjunct professor of voice at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, and teaches private lessons. She has also been working with the school systems of Easton and Redding, Connecticut, where she directs musicals and short plays as well as a high school improv troupe, which performs at local charity events. Under her leadership, Joel Barlow High School's theater program has won several awards from the Connecticut Drama Association and has set the record for winning first place two years in a row in multiple categories.

Personal life

Canova currently resides in Redding, Connecticut, with her husband, record producer Elliot Scheiner. The couple have two children.

Religion

Canova spent a number of years as a member of the Church of Scientology, an organization she later began to criticize. She found the Scientologists straightforward in their desire for money, declaring in 1993 in a Premiere magazine interview, "The first time I walked in those doors, they said, 'Just give us all the money in your bank account.'" She also criticized the Church's counseling practice, called auditing, when she said "They're telling you, 'Don't spend $100 an hour on a shrink's couch, it'll ruin your mind.' Auditing is so much better?"