Tracy Nelson

Tracy Nelson grew up inside one of American television's best-known families and then spent four decades building a separate acting career. She is the oldest of the four children of the singer and actor Ricky Nelson, and the granddaughter of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson [2]. Her own work runs from a Valley Girl in the 1982 sitcom Square Pegs to Sister Stephanie in The Father Dowling Mysteries, a Broadway stint as Rizzo in Grease, and a long list of made-for-television thrillers [2] [3] [4].

Early life and family

Nelson was born on 25 October 1963 in Santa Monica, California [2] [3] [5]. Her father was the singer, songwriter and actor Ricky Nelson, her mother the actress Kristin Harmon, and her paternal grandparents were Ozzie and Harriet Nelson [2]. On her mother's side her grandparents were the football star and sportscaster Tom Harmon and the actress Elyse Knox [2]. Celebrity Net Worth adds that her mother was the sister of the actor Mark Harmon and of Kelly Harmon, which makes Mark Harmon her uncle [7].

She has three younger brothers. Matthew and Gunnar formed the band Nelson, and the youngest, Sam, is a musician and music executive [2]. Her parents married in April 1963 and divorced in 1982 [2]. Biography.com says she clashed with her mother as a teenager and lived with her father [2].

Her screen career began before she could read. As a small child she appeared in Yours, Mine and Ours, the 1968 comedy with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball, where TMDB lists her as Germaine Beardsley [3] [2]. She graduated from the Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles in 1981 and then briefly attended Bard College [2].

The break: Square Pegs

Nelson left Bard in 1982, after she was cast opposite Sarah Jessica Parker in the CBS sitcom Square Pegs [2]. She played Jennifer DeNuccio, a popular, gum-chewing Valley Girl (the spelling DiNuccio also appears in print) [6] [2]. The A.V. Club recalls her delivering lines such as "Ugh, I'd rather go coat-shopping with my mother" with "a breathless ennui" [6].

The show was produced by Norman Lear's Embassy Television. It was created in 1982, ran for 20 episodes in a single season and was cancelled in May 1983 [6]. In a 2008 DVD interview, Nelson and her co-star Claudette Wells, who remained close friends after the show, joked that Jennifer's wig looked like a "squirrel on her head" [6].

Career timeline

After Square Pegs, Nelson worked steadily in guest roles and television films. Biography.com names St. Elsewhere, Family Ties and The Love Boat among her early guest spots, and TMDB dates the first two to 1984 [2] [3]. In 1984 she also played Angela Timini across 14 episodes of the series Glitter [3]. In 1986 she appeared in the film Down and Out in Beverly Hills as Jenny Whiteman [3].

Her next long-running part was Sister Stephanie "Steve" Oskowski in The Father Dowling Mysteries, which TMDB dates from 1989 with 43 episodes. It was preceded by a 1987 television film, Fatal Confession [3]. Playbill later described her as best known for playing a nun opposite Tom Bosley on that show [4]. She took the role while she was being treated for cancer, a story covered in its own section below [2].

The 1990s were busy. She played Evelyn Gardner in six episodes of the series A League of Their Own in 1993, Meredith Parker in five episodes of Melrose Place in 1994, and Ruth Whitney in five episodes of The Man from Snowy River in 1995 [3]. She also had single guest parts in Matlock, Burke's Law, The Nanny, Touched by an Angel and Diagnosis: Murder, and a two-episode run on Murphy Brown in 1998 [3]. In 1998 she appeared in one Seinfeld episode as Janet [3].

Broadway: Rizzo in Grease

In September 1996 Playbill reported, as still unofficial, that producers were about to announce Nelson as the new Rizzo in the Broadway revival of Grease when Sheena Easton left on 23 November [4]. Playbill Vault lists her as a replacement Betty Rizzo in the production that opened on 11 May 1994 [5]. A Playbill item of 11 February 1997 said she would follow Jasmine Guy in the part [8]. Other sites date her Rizzo to 1995, which does not match the Playbill record, so this page uses Playbill's dates.

Made-for-television films

From the late 1990s Nelson became a regular in made-for-television thrillers and holiday films, many of them with Lifetime-style titles. TMDB lists, among others, The Perfect Nanny (2000), Killer Bees (2002), A Grandpa for Christmas (2007), The Wrong Child (2016), The Wrong Stepmother (2019) and The Wrong High School Sweetheart (2022) [3]. In the 2005 CNN interview she put it simply: "I do those Lifetime movies now and again" [1].

Best-known work

Year	Title	Role
1968	Yours, Mine and Ours	Germaine Beardsley
1982	Square Pegs (TV, 20 episodes)	Jennifer DeNuccio
1984	Glitter (TV, 14 episodes)	Angela Timini
1986	Down and Out in Beverly Hills	Jenny Whiteman
1989	The Father Dowling Mysteries (TV, 43 episodes)	Sister Stephanie "Steve" Oskowski
1993	A League of Their Own (TV, 6 episodes)	Evelyn Gardner
1994	Melrose Place (TV, 5 episodes)	Meredith Parker
1995	The Man from Snowy River (TV, 5 episodes)	Ruth Whitney
1998	Seinfeld (TV, 1 episode)	Janet
2000	The Perfect Nanny	Andrea McBride / Nikki Harcourt
2016	The Wrong Child	Joyce
2019	The Wrong Stepmother	Dr. Harris
2024	Tall, Dark and Dangerous	Susie

The year and role entries in this table come from TMDB [3]. The Square Pegs role name is spelled "DeNuccio" in the A.V. Club piece [6].

Cancer, 1987 to 1988

The most personal chapter of her career is medical. Nelson's father died in a plane crash in De Kalb, Texas, on 31 December 1985 [2]. In the CNN interview marking 20 years since the crash, she said she was on a ski vacation in Colorado when it happened [1].

In December 1987 a biopsy found Hodgkin's lymphoma with a large tumour in her chest [2]. She had a seven-hour operation that removed parts of her liver and lymph nodes, followed by months of chemotherapy, and the cancer went into remission within six months of the diagnosis [2]. She has said she felt her late father urged her in a dream to see a doctor [2]. On Larry King Live she described a dream shortly after his death and said that doctors "finally found that I had cancer, I had Hodgkin's Disease" [1]. She told Biography.com: "Things happen for a reason, and I believe I was given a chance to get stronger as a person" [2].

Relationships

Nelson married the actor William R. Moses, known as Billy Moses and then in Falcon Crest, in 1987, when she was 23 [2]. Celebrity Net Worth gives the date as 25 July 1987 [7]. They divorced in 1997 [2] [7].

Their daughter, Remington, was born in August 1992, and Biography.com says the parents share custody [2]. Nelson's son, Elijah Nelson Clark, was born in 2001; his father is Chris Clark, whom Biography.com calls her boyfriend at the time [2] [7]. In 2005 she told Larry King she had "two little kids", aged 13 and four [1].

We found no current partner or later marriage reported by a reliable outlet, so this page does not name one.

Awards and net worth

The pages we opened list no major award or nomination for Nelson, so we do not claim one. As for money, Celebrity Net Worth shows a figure with no date attached, and a figure without a date cannot be treated as an estimate for any year [7]. We therefore give no net worth.

What she is doing now

TMDB's list of her credits runs to 2024. It includes the films Tall, Dark and Dangerous (as Susie) and The Wrong Life Coach (as Mom), and in 2023 the three-episode series As Luck Would Have It (as Barbara Hooper) and the film If I Can't Have You (as Detective Morgan) [3]. We found no credit dated later than 2024. Her Biography.com profile contains no personal or career updates after 2001 [2].