By the time Dolphinback Theatre’s KellyAnn Corcoran arrived in Chicago, she’d already acted in a few shows and did a little directing. A graduate of Webster University in Saint Louis, she moved here in 1992 after her marriage to her high school sweetheart broke up. She was hoping to act in a few commercials before moving on to New York to break into soap operas.
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Corcoran says now she was hoping fame might bring stability and self-esteem. When she was a child, her family led an unsettled life. Her mother committed suicide when Corcoran was 12, and her father was absent much of the time, working overseas as an industrial psychologist for an oil company. Her family was living in Libya in 1984, even after the U.S. had closed its embassy there. Once back in the states, her father took to the road to pursue his dream of becoming a boxing promoter, and Corcoran came to rely on her brother Steven for support.
Steven may have been the family’s pillar of strength, but he still had his wild side. He loved motorcycles. Though he had a wife and two small children, he insisted on recklessly speeding on his Harley to and from work, through the twisty, treacherous roads between Bakersfield and Lake Isabella in the Sierra Nevadas. One day he slipped off the highway and into a canyon. He tried to guide the cycle down a 60-degree grade, but ended up plowing into a boulder. “His last words were ‘Goddamn this hurts.’ I don’t think he knew he was dying.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Nathan Mandell.
