What’s the matter with Sandy Dennis?

The only drug she’s on now is formaldehyde.

Exactly, R1. What’s wrong with her is that she’s dead.

But Sandy Duncan is still alive.

Why do you think there was something wrong with her?

She just had giant upper teeth, as well as an overbite. She had to push the words out or they'd get stuck in those teeth.

In her Westport, Conn., home, actress Sandy Dennis faces another day of domestic disarray. Up since 5 A.M., her usual rising hour, she’s been feeding, fondling and frantically ministering to her 37 cats and three dogs. It’s barely noon, and Sandy has already scrubbed away five stains, removed two cats from potted plants and is on her third load of laundry—mostly rugs. Now she’s attempting the impossible, preparing lunch for human guests. In the kitchen she heats up some lasagna, swiping at cat Stanley when he comes sniffing the pasta. She protects her cheese platter by placing it in the safest place in the house, the bathroom. As Sandy surveys this stage where she has chosen to lead her life, she seems content. “You know, if I didn’t have these 37 cats and three dogs, I think I would have been compulsive.”

After Sandy’s first day in kindergarten, the teacher called home to report that Sandy was dyslexic—she had recited the alphabet backward. “Well, that’s the way I taught her to say it,” says Yvonne [her mother]. “We played the ouija board backward too.”

By 1968 Sandy was a big box office draw and the darling of the critics. “Let me tell you about Sandy Dennis,” wrote New York Times theater critic Walter Kerr. “There should be one in every home.” But her maddening mannerisms were soon attracting notice. At first the comments were cute. “Sandy Dennis is the only actress I know who can take a pause in the middle of ‘uh,’ ” said director Vivian Matalon. Then they turned cruel. “Sandy Dennis has made an acting style out of postnasal drip,” wrote New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael. Dennis says Kael was right. “I did speak from my throat back then, but I don’t anymore.”

More comfortable with criticism than compliments, Sandy begs to hear more of her bad reviews. “She either runs on her sentences incoherently or scrambles them with false starts, jerky internal word repetitions and teeth-baring snorts,” said New York Times theater critic Frank Rich in his 1982 review of Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean. Sandy nods in agreement. “That’s absolutely right. Know why? ‘Cause I used to say things and it didn’t sound right and I would start again. When I began teaching acting, I used to go to class and say, ‘Hello, how are, I mean, hello, oh, I mean.’ ” As for her recurrent gesture of covering her mouth with one hand, which has irritated several critics, Sandy says, “I had these big buck teeth as a kid, and they called me Bugs Bunny. I had braces for five years, but they just didn’t work. Then this wonderful dentist filed them off.”

She was fine and enjoyed anal.

[R8], if you're going to quote directly from her obituary, please add an attribution.

She did a very good English accent in A Touch Of Love (1969)

Sandy had an early role as an understudy in the Broadway production of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and I believe she copied a lot of her acting style from Eileen Heckart who was in the cast.