Dinah graduated from Yale and from the Neighborhood Playhouse school, where she studied with renowned teacher Sandy Meisner. In California, she’s performed on numerous stages, from the Mark Taper Forum, to the Odyssey, to A.C.T.'s Geary in San Francisco. In a review of her performance in "Hamlet," the LA Weekly described her as having achieved "moments of perfection" as Gertrude.

Feature film credits include starring in Henry Jaglom's BABYFEVER, and a role in THE HAPPIEST DAY OF HIS LIFE, from Five Sisters Films, scheduled for a fall release.

Moving from comedy to drama, Dinah has guest-starred on numerous television shows including SOUTH OF NOWHERE, JOAN OF ARCADIA, THE WEST WING and JUDGING AMY. She was a series regular on ABC’s A FINE ROMANCE and is in her 13th season as Nurse Shirley on NBC’s award-winning drama ER.

Dinah teaches and coaches actors privately and works as an adjunct professor in the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television. She directs summer acting programs at Pepperdine University and at UCSD. Dinah holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Acting for Young Actors, co-authored with award winning director Mary Lou Belli and published by Watson-Guptill, is her first book. Her memoir, Bigger Than Life, is due in early ’07 from the University of Nebraska Press. She lives in Echo Park with her husband Fred and their children, Eliza and Jake.