Actress Dinah Manoff is the daughter of actress/director Lee Grant and playwright Arnold Manoff. A graduate of California School of the Arts, Dinah made her first acting appearance in a PBS special. She won a Tony award as the neurotic daughter of an irresponsible movie screenwriter in Neil Simon's I Ought to Be in Pictures; she re-created this role in the 1982 film version, acting opposite Walter Matthau and her mother Lee Grant. On television, Manoff played Elaine Lefkowitz on the serial satire Soap (1978-79), securing a niche in TV history as the first sitcom regular to be "murdered" on-camera. Dinah Manoff later co-starred as Carol Weston opposite fellow Soap alumnus Richard Mulligan on the weekly comedy Empty Nest (1988-1993).