Nancy Giles was born and raised in Queens, New York and is a proud product of the New York City public school system. She is a graduate of Oberlin College and started her professional acting career as a singing bag of garbage with the Paper Bag Players, followed by a short (no pun intended) stint as a Santa elf at Macy's on 34th Street in the heart of Manhattan.
In Chicago she toured for three years with the famed Second City comedy troupe, and worked at the Goodman Theatre. In New York she worked at such theatres as Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, Naked Angels, Ensemble Studio Theatre, All Seasons Theatre Company, and HB Playwrights Foundation. She won a prestigious Theatre World Award for her off-Broadway debut in the musical Mayor.
On television, Nancy is thrilled to be a writer and contributor to the Emmy Award-winning CBS News Sunday Morning. This has provided the largest audience yet for her unique blend of laugh-out-loud humor and common sense wisdom. Whether she’s recalling the first rapper she ever heard (Robert Preston doing “Trouble” in The Music Man), celebrating Black History Month (as a schoolgirl she only had “Negro History Week,” and her mother, “Colored People Hour”) or decrying America’s obsession with Botox and plastic surgery (“when I stop having visible signs of aging, that’ll mean that I’m dead,”) Giles brings vibrant energy and a hip alternative feel that helps distinguish the program from others. She is also currently a regular social commentator on MSNBC, where she dicusses a wide range of topics from video games to the 2008 race for the White House.
She was previously the announcer and co-host of the alternative morning show Fox After Breakfast, was girl GI Frankie Bunsen for three seasons on the acclaimed drama China Beach, and was hostile waitress Connie on the comedy series Delta, starring Delta Burke (both shows on ABC-TV). She's guested on shows like The Jury, LA Law, Spin City, Law and Order, Dream On, and Fresh Prince.
On film: crucial expositional roles in True Crime (Clint Eastwood), Angie, New York Stories (Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks), Working Girl, Big, Joshua and Superheroes; plus the indies Loverboy (Kevin Bacon) and Everything's Jake.
On radio, she was Jay Thomas' sidekick on The Jay Thomas Morning Show on New York's Jammin' 105, and co-hosted Giles and Moriarty with CBS News correspondent Erin Moriarty on WPHT in Philadelphia. Their show won back-to- back American Women in Radio and Television Awards (Gracies) for Best Radio Talk Show for the two seasons it was on the air. You've also heard Nancy's voice on radio and television commercials pitching, as she puts it, “everything from plus-size fashions to True Value Hardware.”
Nancy has written and performed the solo pieces Black Comedy:The Wacky Side of Racism and Notes of a Negro Neurotic, which were both developed with and directed by Ellie Covan at Dixon Place in New York City. She is adapting that material, her essays, and other autobiographical stories for a forthcoming book. She continues to develop new material at both Dixon Place and Passage Theatre in Trenton, New Jersey and at other venues where her friends are in charge.
Comedian 