Mary-Louise Parker

Parker began her acting career on the soap opera Ryan’s Hope before moving to New York City in the late 1980s. She made her Broadway debut in Craig Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss (1990), playing the lead role of Rita, for which she won the Clarence Derwent Award and received a Tony Award nomination. In film, she appeared in Longtime Companion (1989).

In the 1990s, Parker starred in Grand Canyon (1991), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), The Client (1994), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), Boys on the Side (1995), Reckless (1995), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), and The Maker (1997). On stage, she appeared off-Broadway in Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive (1997), earning the Lucille Lortel Award and an Obie Award. She also appeared in independent films including Let the Devil Wear Black and The Five Senses and starred in The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn (1999).

From 2000 to 2001, Parker starred in the play Proof off-Broadway and on Broadway, winning the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. In 2003, she played Harper Pitt in the HBO miniseries Angels in America, earning both a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She appeared in the films Saved! (2004), Miracle Run (2004), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), and The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008). She starred in Broadway productions of Reckless (2004) and Hedda Gabler (2009), and continued her television work with the series Weeds (2005–2012), winning a Golden Globe in 2006.

In the 2010s, Parker appeared in Red (2010), Red 2 (2013), and R.I.P.D. (2013), and on Broadway in The Snow Geese (2013). She starred off-Broadway in Simon Stephens’ Heisenberg (2015), which later transferred to Broadway (2016). She performed in Adam Rapp’s The Sound Inside at the Williamstown Theatre Festival (2018) and on Broadway (2019), winning the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.

In the 2020s, Parker returned to Broadway in the Manhattan Theatre Club revival of How I Learned to Drive (2022), receiving her fifth Tony Award nomination. She also appeared in the 2023 music video for The Reklaws’ song “Honky Tonkin’ About” with Drake Milligan.