He grew up with his 15-year-old mom who was later tragically killed in a case that puzzled police for decades.
It could have broken him – but instead, this star has made an impressive career in Hollywood and even being named as one of TV’s ”Ten Sexiest Men.”
A key witness to his mom’s murder
October 26, 1961, Waterbury, Connecticut. A future Hollywood heartthrob enters the world. His parents are Catholic teens: Diane, an Italian-American just 15, and Richard, an 17-year-old Irish-American. The boy’s name is Mark.
Sadly, his parents split before Mark even turned two. By the age of five, he had already lost his mother. Diane was shot in the head in February 1967, and though our star didn’t actually see the shooting, he was a key witness. At the time, Mark had been kicked out of the house by his mother’s boyfriend, a known gangster and heroin addict — just moments before the gun went off.
Police and paramedics rushed to the scene, and Diane was carried out on a stretcher with a fatal gunshot to her heavily bandaged head. For decades, her death was officially ruled an accidental shooting, but that story would change in recent years, revealing shocking new details.
”I’m not happy that all this happened to me, but I learned from it,” he once said.
After their mother’s murder, the future Hollywood star and his sister went to live with their maternal grandmother, Avis, in Waterbury, Connecticut. Waterbury was a tough, working-class neighborhood, and he recalls that his family was one of the few white families in the area.
Felt awkward as a teen
As a teenager, he felt awkward and out of place, even joking about his “Dorothy Hamill hairdo.” To find confidence, he started mimicking his acting heroes, icons like Marlon Brando and Humphrey Bogart, adopting their mannerisms and style.
Meanwhile, his father was living a very different life, running the West Fourth Street Saloon in Greenwich Village, New York City.
“Dad was essentially a 21 or 22-year-old bachelor, just trying to find himself,” the actor once explained during an interview with Irish America. “It just made sense at the time for me and my sister to stay with my grandmother rather than go with my Dad.”
As a teenager, Mark often worked in his father’s bar, helping out by serving drinks and breaking up fights. By then, his dad, Richard, was known to locals as “Mac” at the West 4th Street Saloon in Greenwich Village. Starting at age 13, he spent more and more time with his father, first as a busboy, then as a waiter, and eventually as a bartender.
”I was not big. I’ve been punched out many many times,” the actor told Movieline magazine in 2000.
For a while, Mark even shared an apartment with his dad, soaking in the sights, sounds, and characters of the bar, learning about life behind the counter firsthand.
The actor remembers that he and his father were more like brothers than father and son, which wasn’t surprising given that his dad was only 17 years older than him. They shared a lot of fun together — perhaps too much — filled with late nights, comings and goings, and older women.
Eventually, his father decided it was time for Dylan to have his own place. Soon after, it was time for him to start a new chapter; his acting career.
His father’s third wife changed everything
When Mark was 15, he gained a new stepmother. His father’s third wife, the famous playwright Eve Ensler, would change the course of his career. She saw something in her stepson that convinced her Mark had real potential as an actor.
When Eve suggested he should become an actor too, it just clicked for him. He recalled serving actors like John Belushi, William Hurt, and Ray Sharkey, who often came into the bar where he worked. Mark thought, “Wow, what a life.”
He told his father he was quitting the bar life.
“My old man was always supportive; he never questioned it,” he remembered. “He always believed in me, he just said, ‘Go ahead and do it.”
Mark soon landed a role in one of his stepmother’s Off-Broadway plays. His father, supported him financially through Fordham University, where he studied acting.
He later joined the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse, performing in numerous productions, including one opposite Joanne Woodward. His work in Neil Simon’s play Biloxi Blues caught the attention of the casting agent for Hamburger Hill, launching his professional career.
Sad truth behind the name change
Over the years, Mark has often praised his stepmother, and it’s clear they shared a very close bond — so close, in fact, that she influenced not only his career but also the name he would become known by.
Along the way, S.A.G. regulations required Mark to change his professional name. He chose Dylan, partly as a tribute to the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, but also because of a personal family story that left a lasting mark.
“My father was going to have a baby with my stepmother and they were going to use the name Dylan,” he explains. “But there was a miscarriage, so the name kind of fell to me.”
It was a name born from both loss and love, a reminder of his deep connection to the woman who had shaped so much of his life. And ever since, the world has known him as Dylan McDermott. Yes, we’re talking about the Law & Order: Organized Crime star who has built an impressive career in Hollywood.
His credits include major projects like Olympus Has Fallen, American Horror Story and Steel Magnolias. He also won a Golden Globe in 1999 for his role on the TV drama The Practice.
In addition to Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe win, Dylan has also been recognized as one of TV’s “Ten Sexiest Men,” according to People magazine.
Wife and children
When it comes to his personal life, the American Horror Story alum married actress Shiva Rose in 1995 after they met in a coffee shop, and he reportedly fell for her immediately. Interestingly, Rose once told People magazine that when she first saw the “handsome actor,” she wasn’t interested at all.
But once he spoke, she realized there was more to him than looks—he was poetic and eloquent, and she was drawn in.
The couple had two children together, Colette and Charlotte. Charlotte was born in 2005, and her older sister Colette arrived nine years earlier, in 1996. After 12 years of marriage, the Practice star filed for divorce in 2008, citing irreconcilable differences. Court documents revealed that their marriage had been strained for some time, with the couple having been separated for a year before the filing.
McDermott, a recovering alcoholic who has been sober since 1984, later began dating his Stalker co-star Maggie Q. In 2017, the couple said they weren’t in a hurry to have a formal wedding ceremony. However, after a four-year engagement, they announced their split in February 2019.
Even though Dylan McDermott has enjoyed a brilliant career, there has always been a struggle simmering beneath the surface. The tragic story of Dylan McDermott’s mother, Diane, haunted the actor for decades.
Solving the mystery of his mother’s death
Diane died on February 9, 1967, when Dylan was just five years old, and for years, the circumstances surrounding her death remained a mystery.
In 2011, Dylan met with Waterbury Mayor Neil O’Leary and Police Superintendent Michael Gugliotti while visiting Waterbury for a fundraiser. He raised questions about the cold case and investigators discovered that many of the original files had been lost or were missing, complicating efforts to uncover the truth.
Diane was right-handed, but the fatal gunshot wound was on the left side of her head. Diane’s boyfriend at the time was a low-level mobster named John Sponza, who reportedly had connections in law enforcement and may have served as an informant, was linked to the case.
The police found evidence that Diane and young Dylan had suffered abuse at Sponza’s hands. Dylan “vividly recalls” several occasions when Sponza threatened him with a gun, saying, “Shut up and get out of here,” according to Gugliotti.
Police Superintendent Michael Gugliotti was taken aback by the extent of the abuse the family endured.
”Sponza [told] the police that night that he very rarely, if ever, had arguments, yet everyone we spoke to, including Dylan, who was only five at the time, remembered very violent, vicious arguments,” Gugliotti said.
Autopsy records later revealed that the gun found near Diane’s body was too small to have caused the fatal wound.
Never faced justice
Police eventually reclassified her death as a murder and concluded that Sponza should have been charged, not only for Diane’s death but also for two other unsolved homicides. Sponza never faced justice; in 1972, his bullet-riddled body was found in the trunk of a car in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Dylan’s sister, Robin Herrera, was only seven months old when their mother died, so she does not carry the same vivid memories of the tragedy.
She said, “I’m happy to know my mother wasn’t mentally ill or depressed. Somebody took her from us; she didn’t leave us.”
Dylan himself has largely remained private about the case. He told police that he had kept the memories buried in order to survive and achieve success in his career.
“He said, ‘In order for me to survive and to get where I am today, I needed to bury that moment in my life deep within myself,” Gugliotti shared.
How it shaped him
For Dylan McDermott, the loss of his mother shaped him profoundly.
“When you lose a parent young, it hardens you for life,” he said in 2000. “I have good memories of my mother. When you lose a mother so early, it’s all you have.”
”There were entire parts of my childhood that I wouldn’t recommend to anybody, for me as an artist, if I can use those parts in a positive, constructive manner, if I can keep the memory of my mother alive in my work, then it’s a good thing,” Dylan said.
I’ve always admired Mr. McDermott, and I truly hope the renewed investigation into his mother’s death brought him some measure of peace. It’s remarkable that he never gave up — and that he was ultimately the one responsible for uncovering the truth. This is something the police should have resolved decades ago!
Thank you, Dylan, for all the unforgettable moments you’ve given us on screen and for sharing your difficult journey with such honesty. We hope to see much more of you on our screens in the years to come!
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