Judith Hoag was quoted as saying “I’ve shot eight [television pilots] so far. I am an optimist. I believe that one day I will do a pilot that will actually go!”

While you may not know Hoag as a leading lady, her optimism did pay off, to some degree. In 1989 she landed her first series, playing Melissa Shaw Elliott in Wolf. 11 episodes aired before being cancelled a year later, but that’s also when she got the part of April O’Neill. Hoag had brief success in movies but went back to TV a couple years later, and that’s pretty much where she stayed, though Hoag certainly made the rounds. If there was a show you watched in the last three decades, Hoag was in it.

Hoag guest starred in Quantum Leap, Roseanne, Melrose Place, Dream On, The Nanny, Murder She Wrote, Mad About You, The X Files, Touched by an Angel, The Pretender, Judging Amy, Boston Pulbic, Six Feet Under, ER, CSI, Jag, Still Standing, Grey’s Anatomy, Sons of Anarchy, Castle, Criminal Minds, Weeds, and many others. She also played major roles in The Magicians as Stephanie Quinn, Nashville as Tandy Hampton, and Big Love as Cindy Price. You might also know her as Gwen Piper from the Halloweentown TV movies. In 2015, Hoag filmed a cameo for the 2016 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, but the scene was cut.

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