Jeanie Drynan

Jeanie Drynan is an Australian actress who grew up in Lithgow and Coffs Harbour and trained at the Edinburgh College of Speech and Drama and the National Institute of Dramatic Art, earning a Diploma of Dramatic Art in 1961. She began in guest roles across Australian television, including Hunter, Skippy, Division 4 and Homicide, and had early screen parts in They're a Weird Mob (1966) and the television play The Schoolmistress (1967). She starred as English teacher Mary Dunstan in the soap opera Class of '74 and as Kath Henderson in Don's Party (1976), later playing solicitor Angela Jeffries in Prisoner. Her best-known film role was Betty Heslop, Muriel's mother, in Muriel's Wedding (1994). She also appeared in Paperback Hero (1999), A Kind of Hush and Soft Fruit. Drynan received three Australian Film Institute Award nominations, for Don's Party, Muriel's Wedding and Soft Fruit.