Diane Beebe recently won the first award by the NY NUB AWARDS for background acting.
Beebe portrayed a courthouse spectator in a recently aired Law & Order: SVU episode (directed by and starring Mariska Hargitay) which was filmed on the steps of the New York Courthouse on Nov. 8, 2016 and aired on Feb. 8, 2017 on NBC. In a scene with Raul Esparza, Beebe overlooked a conversation between Esparza and the victims’ family.
Beebe, a resident of Four Seasons development in Pennington, is not new to the acting genre. At the age of 4, she auditioned for the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. Although she did not make the final cut, she persevered with her dancing, piano and voice training.
As a high school student, she appeared in many school plays and performed several solos on stage during her school’s concerts. She even got to wear Barbara Streisand’s costume from Funny Girl while performing her first solo, “People.”
After high school, she joined the Bay Ridge Repertory Theater group and was part of the ensemble for two plays when she got her break as third lead in Bye Bye Birdie, playing Mrs. MacAfee and performed this on the Off Broadway stage.
Beebe also worked as an administrative assistant for several companies in NYC while attending college at night. She worked in advertising, law, the airline industry and television.
Later, while attending college in New York, she began doing solo singing performances in local areas in Brooklyn, where she grew up. Thanks to her Greek heritage, one summer she got to perform on a cruise line, out of Athens Greece for the summer, on Epirotiki Lines.
In 1971, while working in Manhattan for Paramount Pictures as a legal secretary, she was asked to play a wedding guest during the filming of The Godfather in Staten Island. In the 1990’s, she portrayed The Gospel Singer in Lazarus and the Fig Tree performance which was a CYO production.
Later, after she married and raised her children, she went back to singing, only this time in church. She became a soloist for weddings and funerals as well as a choir member. Eventually she became the music director and soloist at a church in Totowa.
Also while studying for her Masters Degree in Communication & Vocal Performance, she interned at WOR-TV, working with such celebrities as Jackie Mason and Howard Stern. She also worked at a junior college as an assistant professor teaching communications and video production, and eventually retired from that position.
After moving to central New Jersey in spring 2011, she saw an ad for a pageant for women 60 and older in Atlantic City. She put an act together of playing piano and singing and performed there in June of 2012. Although she did not make the top 5, she made it her goal to eventually win this title. In 2013, Beebe entered again and made the top five, and in 2014, she won the title of Ms. New Jersey Senior America.
In 2016, she entered the National Senior America Pageant in Atlantic City and out of 42 contestants, she placed in the top 10. She says she is considering entering one last time in 2019 because she states “the third try has always been my lucky one.”
After winning the title in 2014, she became involved with the N.J. Cameo Club, an offshoot of the Ms. NJ Senior America pageant. She began singing with other women around the state at Veterans’ establishments, senior developments and nursing homes. She became an officer in the National Club –NSAA as secretary for 2 years and since then has designed and set up several websites, including her own: dianebeebe.com
In 2016, she turned back to acting, giving up a successful real estate career to pursue a dream. She has appeared in a number of TV shows, both on cable and network television, and several motion picture films, one to be released sometime this year directed by Martin Scorsese.
She had several roles in the crime reenactment genre for the Investigative Discovery channel and one lead performance to air sometime in 2018. Two shows she completed will be airing shortly on Netflix, including a scene with Adam Sandler in the movie The Week Of. She is hoping to become SAG eligible soon and hopes to join SAG-AFTRA as soon as possible.
Diane Beebe won an award for her background appearance a ‘Law & Order: SVU’ episode.,
