Denise Nickerson ✝

Denise Marie Nickerson (April 1, 1957 – July 10, 2019) was an American child actress. She is best known for her role as Violet Beauregarde in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. She later played Allison on The Electric Company, and had recurring roles as Amy Jennings, Nora Collins, and Amy Collins in the soap opera Dark Shadows. She retired from acting in 1978 and later worked as a receptionist and office manager. Nickerson was born on April 1, 1957, in New York City, to Flo, a clerical worker, and Fred Nickerson, a mail carrier. The family, along with older sister Carol and her son, moved to Miami. Nickerson, at the age of two, appeared in a television commercial for a Florida heating company. At the age of four she was discovered at a fashion show by Broadway Theatre producer Zev Buffman of drama school the Neighborhood Playhouse. In 1962, when she was five, she was in a play of Peter Pan as Wendy's daughter starring Betsy Palmer at Miami's Coconut Grove Playhouse. Buffman selected Nickerson to go on the road with the play, first to Washington, D.C. When Denise was nine, the play ended. Her parents moved Carol and Nickerson back to New York City at 56th and Lexington in a studio apartment while they (and Shane, Carol's son), stayed with her grandmother in Massachusetts.