Before the soap, she played "Kate" on Pensacola: Wings of Gold, currently running on TNT. Kate owns the local bar where all the fighter pilots hang out, so Niven studied with a local bartender when she got the part. He gave her lessons in bar tricks, which she paid for by washing bar glasses for him lots of them. Dishpan hands were worth it. "This character was the closest to my personality of any part I’ve ever played," Niven emphasizes. "Kate loves being a woman. I designed her to contrast with the military women on the show….curly hair and a flirty persona. But it works because she does it all with a wink and a sense of humor. She’s a great broad and a great role model.
She also played "Marilyn Monroe" in HBO's The Rat Pack and says it was a dream come true to play her favorite icon. One of her prized possessions is a well-worn framed photo of Marilyn that Monroe herself actually owned, passed down from someone who worked with her at the Actor’s Studio.
Niven loves taking risks, playing out there characters. In the independent film Anoosh of the Airways she plays eight different wacky characters, and says it was freeing because there were no limits to where the characters could go because it was a black comedy. She also recently starred in a John Patrick Shanley play, Psychopathia Sexualis (click here for review) playing an outrageous beer-drinking Texan named "Lucille" who stomps around the stage in a wedding dress and cowboy boots. She says, "I find that you can play anything outrageously as long as you play it from an absolute core of truth."
She says that Katherine Hepburn and Jessica Tandy are her idols. "You follow their careers and you watch the evolution of two human beings over the course of a lifetime. Age just made their work richer. Hollywood has it all wrong today, the way they discriminate against age in women. It takes living to be a good actor. For me, it gets more exciting all the time. I can feel my instrument and my work getting better and better, and can’t wait to see where the journey takes me.
A native of Portland, Oregon, Niven’s upbringing hardly suggested the career she chose to pursue. She dreamed of being an actress and writer and loved being the center of attention as a child.
While in Portland, she appeared in more than 2500 radio and television commercials and served as spokesperson for a number of companies. She also won her first dramatic role, opposite James Garner and James Woods, in the Emmy-winning "Hallmark Hall of Fame" telefilm The Promise. She subsequently won recurring roles in such series as Pacific Palisades, The Bold and the Beautiful and Silk Stalkings, as well as guest-starring spots on Love Boat: The New Wave, Mike Hammer and Wings. Her telefilm credits include HBO’s Breast Men and the offbeat comedy I Married a Monster, a remake of the classic that she describes as " David Lynch meets Norman Rockwell with lots of special effects."
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