Leigh Dillon ’79

Listen closely to the speeches at award shows, and you may hear actors thank Leigh Dillon ’79 for her dialect, voice, speech, and accent-reduction coaching.

Like Patricia Arquette, who won a Golden Globe and Emmy for HULU’s The Act and a Golden Globe for Showtime’s Escape from Dannemora, and Julianne Moore, whom Dillon trained for the role of Sarah Palin in Game Change.

Dillon, now associate professor emerita of theatre arts, taught acting students here for 10 years.

“She was the type of teacher when she walked down the hallways, everyone cleared. She was so tough,” says Arnette. “But her work has stuck with me the most in terms of integration of all the core classes—acting, voice, speech, and movement. Her class really brought all four of those together for me.”