Actress, author, producer, and Photoplay's 'Most Popular Actress of 1961', the daughter of Ice Capades skating stars and choreographers Nathan and Edith Walley. She was skating with her parents at age three, but resisted her father's urging to continue, opting to study acting at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts. Her stage debut was at 14, in a summer-stock production of "Charley's Aunt". When she moved to Arizona to raise her three sons, she co-founded two children's theater companies (Pied Piper Productions and Sedona Children's Theater), introducing live theater and teaching acting to disadvantaged children. She also founded the Swiftwind Theater Company, writing film scripts and training American Indian actors and production-crew members. Her 1990 short film The Vision of Seeks-To-Hunt Great, starring Michael Horse, was awarded the National Cine Golden Eagle, the Oklahoma Tribal Council Award for best fiction film, the 1991 Algrave (Portugal) International Video Festival best-of-festival award, and the American Indian Film Festival's best short-subject award. She incorporated the story line -- an Indian boy's appreciation of nature while following a mountain lion -- into her 1993 children's book "Grandfather's Good Medicine". Deborah Walley also wrote scripts for her own production companies, for other children's films, and for Disney Animation, for which she supplied cartoon voice-overs.



Moved to Arizona in the early 1990s where she co-founded the Sedona Children's Theater. Left films in the early 1970s, remarried, and had one son from each of her marriages. Her interest in Native American heritage occurred early in life. Her stepfather was part Native American. Later she was married to a Cherokee who is the father of her second son.