Mary Tanner (born 21 May 1963) is an actress whose career includes over 100 professional roles in film, television and theatre. After high profile roles for CBS and PBS in the 1980s, she returned to her native Nashville in the early '90s and began writing and producing local productions. She eventually went into puppeteering and puppet building with Wishing Chair Productions and, later, Brianimations, with Brian Hull. Tanner continues to act, and in 2019, she was seen in Dolly Parton’s Smokey Mountain Christmas Carol at the Emerson Colonial Theater in Boston, MA and God, Help Us!, co-starring Ed Asner, at the Franklin Theater in Franklin, TN.