She also worked on Broadway, where she debuted supporting Patty Duke in 1962, in Isle of Children, and won a Theatre World Award for playing the lead of in My Sweet Charlie, in 1966. From 1961 to 1967, Bedelia was a regular on the CBS soap opera Love of Life, portraying Sandy Porter. Her only dancing role onscreen was that of Clara in the Playhouse 90 television production of the George Balanchine Nutcracker (1958). Career īefore becoming an actress, Bedelia studied ballet and appeared in a few productions with the New York City Ballet, including The Nutcracker. She received her acting training at HB Studio. īedelia studied dance in her youth, at School of American Ballet. She is the aunt of actors Macaulay, Kieran, and Rory Culkin. She has two brothers, one of whom is actor Kit Culkin, and a sister, Candice Culkin. Her mother died when she was 14 and her father, "who had always had ulcers", died shortly afterward.
She was born in a difficult financial period when her father's firm went bankrupt, and they lived in "a cold-water tenement flat". Bedelia was born in the Manhattan borough of New York City, the daughter of Marian Ethel (née Wagner), a writer and editor, and Philip Harley Culkin, who was in public relations and 50 years old at the time.