A comic actress who also has excelled as steely, somewhat brittle women in dramas, Mimi Kennedy has been through the network TV wars, appearing in numerous short-lived series while building a reputation as a fine performer. She first won notice playing Jan in the Broadway musical "Grease" and by 1977 joined Debbie Allen and Ellen Foley as "Three Girls Three" (NBC), a critically-praised but short-lived program which was part variety, part sitcom. But it started Kennedy on the series path. She appeared in a supporting role in "Stockard Channing in Just Friends" (CBS, 1979) and was a regular on the short-lived variety program "The Big Show" (NBC, 1980). Kennedy went on to win praise as the career woman who hires Peter Cook to tidy up in the CBS series "The Two of Us" (1981-1982) and as mother to Chad Lowe's teen with tribulations "Spencer" (NBC, 1984-1985) She was married to Richard Libertini in "Family Man" (ABC, 1988) and was sister-in-law to Peter Onorati in "Joe's Life" (ABC, 1993).
Moving to drama, Kennedy had a recurring role on the CBS primetime soaps "Knots Landing", for which she was also a writer and story editor. She scored as the proper, bigoted Ruth Sloan in the cult hit "Homefront" (CBS, 1991-93) and played a variation on the role as a snobbish socialite in "Savannah" (The WB, 1996-97). Returning to sitcoms, Kennedy was cast as the mother of a free-spirited woman who marries a blueblood in the highly touted sitcom "Dharma & Greg" (ABC, 1997- ).
While her TV-movie work began with "Thin Ice" (CBS, 1981), Kennedy is better recalled as the wife and mother of a practical joking family who finds the joke is on them in "Mr. Boggedy" (ABC, 1986), and its 1987 sequel. She also portrayed Patricia Kennedy Lawford in the miniseries "Robert Kennedy and His Times" (CBS, 1985). Her work in feature films has been limited. She did not begin appearing on the big screen until "Chances Are" (1989) and subsequently was mother to Harrison Mohr in "Immediate Family" (1989), and had small roles in "Pump Up the Volume" (1990), "Death Becomes Her" (1992) and "Buddy" (1997). In 1996, Kennedy published a memoir, "Taken to the Stage: The Education of an Actress", about working her way through casting couches and auditions to "working" status.