Mary-Louise Parker (born August 2, 1964) is an American actress. Best known for her lead role on Showtime's television series Weeds portraying Nancy Botwin, she received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 2006. Parker has appeared in films and series such as RED, RED 2, Fried Green Tomatoes, Boys on the Side, The West Wing, and Angels in America, for which she received a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Parker is also the recipient of the 2001 Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance in the Broadway play Proof.
Early life
Parker was born in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. The youngest of four children, she is the daughter of Caroline Louise (née Morell) and John Morgan Parker, a judge who served in the U.S. Army. Her ancestry includes Swedish (from her maternal grandfather), English, Scottish, Scots-Irish, German, and Dutch. Because of her father's career, Parker spent parts of her childhood in Tennessee and Texas, as well as in Thailand, Germany, and France. She described her childhood as "profoundly unhappy", further noting that, "My parents did everything they could; I had books, clothes, a home and a warm bed, but I was never happy". She graduated from Marcos de Niza High School in Tempe, Arizona. Parker majored in drama at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where she met Joe Mantello, and graduated in 1986.
Career
1980s
Parker got her start in a role on the soap opera Ryan's Hope. In the late 1980s, Parker moved to New York, where she got a job measuring feet at the ECCO shoe company. After a few minor roles, she made her Broadway debut in a 1990 production of Craig Lucas' Prelude to a Kiss, playing the lead role of Rita. She moved with the production when it transferred from its origin Off-Broadway. She won the Clarence Derwent Award for her performance and was nominated for a Tony Award (although she did not play the role when the film was made).
1990s
She starred with Kevin Kline in Grand Canyon (1991); with Kathy Bates, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Jessica Tandy in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991); with Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones in The Client (1994); with John Cusack in Bullets Over Broadway (1994); and with Drew Barrymore and Whoopi Goldberg in Boys on the Side (1995), as a woman with AIDS. Her next role was in a movie adaptation of another Craig Lucas play, Reckless (1995), alongside Mia Farrow, followed by Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady (1996), which also starred Nicole Kidman, Viggo Mortensen, Christian Bale, John Malkovich and Barbara Hershey. In addition, she appeared alongside Matthew Modine in Tim Hunter's The Maker (1997).
Parker's theater career continued when she appeared in Paula Vogel's 1997 critical smash How I Learned to Drive, with David Morse. In the late 1990s, she appeared in several independent films, including Let the Devil Wear Black and The Five Senses.
2001â€"2003
On December 7, 2003, HBO aired an epic six-and-a-half hour adaptation of Tony Kushner's acclaimed Broadway play Angels in America, directed by Mike Nichols. Parker played Harper Pitt, the Mormon Valium-addicted wife of a closeted lawyer. For her performance, Parker received Golden Globe and Emmy awards for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries.
2004â€"2006
In 2004, Parker appeared in the comedy Saved!, and a television film called Miracle Run, based on the true story of a mother of two sons with autism, as well as appearing in Craig Lucas' Reckless on Broadway. Parker took the lead role that had been Mia Farrow's on screen. The production, directed by Mark Brokaw, earned Parker another nomination for a Tony Award for Best Actress in 2005.
In November 2005, Parker was the subject of a career exhibition at Boston University, where memorabilia from her career were donated to the University's library. Parker received the 2006 Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy, given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, for her lead role in Weeds. In that category, she defeated the four leads of Desperate Housewives. She dedicated the award to the late John Spencer, known for his work as Leo McGarry on The West Wing. After receiving the award, Parker stated: "I'm really in favor of legalizing marijuana. I don't think it's that controversial."
2007 onwards
In March 2007, Parker played the lead role in the television film The Robber Bride. She then portrayed Zerelda Mimms in the Andrew Dominik film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which opened in cinemas in September 2007. Parker appeared alongside Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell and Garret Dillahunt. In August 2007, Parker continued her role in the third season of Weeds.
In August 2007, she posed nude for an ad for the third season of Weeds. In the ad, she appears as Eve in the Garden of Eden, with a snake draped around her body and a cannabis leaf behind her ear.
Parker appeared in 2008's The Spiderwick Chronicles and in off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons production in the New York premiere of Dead Man's Cell Phone, a new play by Sarah Ruhl, alongside Drama Desk Award Winner Kathleen Chalfant.
She filmed the Donna Vermeer film Les Passages alongside Julie Delpy. Following this, she returned to work on the fifth season of Weeds. Parker took the lead role in the Roundabout Theatre Broadway revival of the play Hedda Gabler, running from January through March 29, 2009. The play garnered a series of negative reviews.
Parker starred opposite Bruce Willis in the film RED, an adaptation of the comic book mini-series of the same name. The film was released on October 15, 2010. In 2011, Parker became the host for the tenth season of the PBS documentary series Independent Lens. In 2013 she played roles in both RED 2 and R.I.P.D. She appeared in the Broadway Manhattan Theatre Club production of the play The Snow Geese by Sharr White at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre from October 24 through December 15, 2013. The play was directed by Daniel J. Sullivan and also starred Danny Burstein and Victoria Clark.
Personal life
From 1997 to November 2003, Parker dated actor Billy Crudup, with whom she had a son, William Atticus Parker, born in 2004. William's godmother is actress Susan Sarandon.
In December 2006, Parker began dating actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan, whom she met on the set of Weeds. On February 12, 2008, Parker and Morgan announced their engagement, only to break up again in April 2008.
In 2009, Parker was dating singer Charlie Mars, and appeared in a video for his "Listen to the Darkside."
In September 2007, Parker adopted a baby girl from Ethiopia.
In 2013 Parker was honored for her work with Hope North, an organization that works in the educating and healing of young victims in Uganda's civil war. The actress began her involvement with the organization after meeting a former victim of Uganda's civil war.
Filmography
Film
Television
Theatre
Awards and nominations
References
External links
- Mary-Louise Parker at the Internet Movie Database
- Mary-Louise Parker at the Internet Broadway Database
- Mary-Louise Parker at the TCM Movie Database
- Mary Louise Parker at Emmys.com
