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Belinda Balaski

Belinda Balaski is an American film and television actor whose career has moved easily between stage work, episodic television and genre movies. Born in Inglewood on December 8, 1947, she initially imagined a very different future: her father, Lester Balaski, was a jockey, and she wanted to follow the same path. Instead, she attended Colorado Women’s College and later majored in drama at Parsons College. The stage helped open the door to television. Balaski won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Emma Duckworth in a Los Angeles Metropolitan Theatre production of Bus Stop, a performance that led to television work. Her TV appearances include two episodes of Baywatch, playing a worried mother in the 1992 episode “Sharks Cove” and Cleo Jennings in the 1996 episode “Sail Away.” For movie fans, Balaski is particularly associated with director Joe Dante. She played Terri Fisher in The Howling, released in 1981, and appeared in most of Dante’s other films, including Piranha, Gremlins, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Matinee and Small Soldiers. She also featured in two segments Dante directed for Amazon Women on the Moon. That recurring collaboration gives her film career a clear thread through the director’s distinctive corner of American genre filmmaking. Elsewhere, Balaski co-starred in The Food of the Gods and Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw, both of which also featured Marjoe Gortner. In Cannonball!, she played a navigator taking part in a cross-country car race. Taken together, these roles show a performer comfortable with horror, comedy, action and television drama—a versatile screen presence whose work rewards viewers willing to look beyond the top line of the cast.