Zane Buzby

Zane Buzby is an American actress, philanthropist, film director, and television director.

Zane Buzby grew up in New York and graduated with honors from Hofstra University with degrees in performance and dramatic literature. She began her show business career as a film editor working for The Beatles' Apple Films. Her first major acting credit was in the Carl Reiner film Oh, God! (1977). She later appeared in the films Up in Smoke (1978) (opposite Cheech & Chong), Americathon (1979) (opposite John Ritter), National Lampoon's Class Reunion (1982) scripted by John Hughes, Jerry Lewis' film Cracking Up, and the Rob Reiner film This Is Spinal Tap (1984). She also co-starred in and directed the feature film comedy, Last Resort (1986), starring Charles Grodin.

She later became a television director mentored by James Burrows and producer Edgar J. Scherick. She went on to amass over 200 directing credits in episodic television, directing episodes of Dads, Married... with Children, Newhart, My Sister Sam, Head of the Class, My Two Dads, The Van Dyke Show, Charles in Charge, The Golden Girls, Blossom, and Sister, Sister. Buzby also directed HBO's "Women of the Night" starring Martin Short, Joy Behar, Ellen DeGeneres, Rita Rudner and Judy Tenuta. Buzby had a television production/development deal at Paramount where she executive-produced several television pilots.

Buzby has devoted herself to philanthropy, assisting Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe. She is the founder of the Survivor Mitzvah Project, an urgent humanitarian effort bringing emergency aid to the last survivors of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. She is also the founder of SMP's Holocaust Educational Archive, a growing repository of thousands of letters from survivors and hundreds of hours of videotape shot in five countries in Eastern Europe, depicting never before recorded testimony and locations illustrating the "Holocaust in the East." She has received numerous awards and honors for her humanitarian work and commitment to the plight of over 2000 Holocaust survivors helped through the organization she founded. Zane Buzby has received the 2017 Anti-Defamation League's Deborah Award, honoring outstanding women whose professional leadership, philanthropy, and civic contributions exemplify the ideals of the Anti-Defamation League. In 2014, Zane Buzby was named a CNN HERO, and has been awarded the KCET LOCAL HERO AWARD for her humanitarian work, and has been profiled as a "Hero At Home" by KTLA Television.

She and partner Conan Berkeley are currently working on a documentary film titled Family of Strangers, about the Survivor Mitzvah Project's emergency efforts to help the last survivors of the Holocaust. Shot on location in four countries, the film spans six years of emergency aid expeditions led by Buzby in remote areas of Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine