Harley Jane Kozak

Award-winning Mystery Author and Actress

Harley Jane Kozak
Harley is the youngest of eight children born to Joseph and Dorothy Kozak, an attorney and a music teacher in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. When Joe died a year after Harley's birth, Dorothy packed up her children and moved to North Dakota and then on to Lincoln, Nebraska, to teach at the University there.

Harley first appeared onstage at age 5 in a college opera production of Dido and Aneas, broke gender barriers in 4th grade by playing the title character in Benjamin Franklin and discovered the value of nepotism when she became a recurring 5th grader on the educational TV show, Music With Mrs. Kozak. As a junior in high school she was tap dancing in the Nebraska Repertory Theater, and the following summer supporting herself full-time with a $55-a-week paycheck from The Legend of Daniel Boone in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, playing Indian Maiden #2.

At age 19, having done some 30 plays, Harley hit the road and ended up on New York's Lower East Side. She was accepted into the the professional acting training program at NYU's School of the Arts (now Tisch School of the Arts). Completing the program 3 years later, Harley was cast in the feature film The House on Sorority Row, and said goodbye to a decade of waitressing. Soon she got a soap opera (Texas) and a husband, and a year and a half later a cancellation notice and a divorce. After 2 years on Guiding Light, she moved to L.A. to do Santa Barbara, her last soap, where she met her end being crushed to death by a giant neon letter "C".

Harley went on to star in feature films Parenthood, Arachnophobia, The Favor, Sideout, The Taking of Beverly Hills, Necessary Roughness, All I Want for Christmas, Magic in the Water, and Dark Planet, and prime time series Knightwatch, Harts of the West, Bringing Up Jack, Charlie Grace, and You Wish. TV movies include The Amy Fisher Story, So Proudly We Hail, A Friend's Betrayal, Unforgiveable, Emma's Wish, The Android Affair and Titanic, the miniseries. Her stage appearances include The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Seagull, Twelfth Night, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire, Love Letters, Man of the Moment, Lost in Yonkers, and Born Yesterday.

Harley Jane Kozak lives in California with her husband, three children, two dogs and a cat.

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For lots more information, please visit Harley Jane Kozak at http://harleyjanekozak.com/.