Mary-Louise Parker Biography

Mary-Louise Parker was born in Fort Jackson, South Carolina on August 2, 1964, the youngest of several children. Her father was a judge and officer in the military, and the family of "army brats" grew up on military bases around the United States. Parker's interest in the arts began during high school, and she went on to major in acting at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Following graduation, she moved to New York City in the mid-'80s to pursue a career in theater.

Parker initially found work off-Broadway, and also had a short stint on ABC's daytime soap, Ryan's Hope. In 1988, she made her TV movie debut in the CBS World War II drama Too Young the Hero, quickly followed by her feature film debut as an abused girlfriend in Signs of Life (1989).

After a couple of years working in off-Broadway productions, Parker debuted on Broadway in 1990 in Prelude to a Kiss, for which she won a Theatre World award and received a Tony nomination. That same year, she appeared in another production that dealt with the AIDS crisis, the feature drama Longtime Companion, in which she portrayed the token female friend of a group of gay men.

Parker received critical praise for her breakout performance in Fried Green Tomatoes in 1991, and also appeared in Grand Canyon that same year. Returning to the stage for Babylon Gardens (1991), Mary-Louise Parker played a woman driven to madness due to the birth of a deformed baby, while in the 1993 black comedy Four Dogs and a Bone, she portrayed an overly ambitious young actress.

Parker balanced her film roles throughout the '90s with work in both studio and independent productions, appearing in the romantic comedy Mr. Wonderful (1993), and portraying a suffering girlfriend in Naked in New York (also 1993), a trailer park mom in The Client' (1994), another long-suffering girlfriend in Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway (also 1994), an AIDS-stricken woman in Boys on the Side (1995), and a paraplegic, deaf and mute woman in the dark comedy Reckless (also 1995).

Parker also took parts in made-for-TV movies such as A Place For Annie (1994) and the HBO biopic Sugartime (1995), in which she starred as 1950s singing sensation Phyllis McGuire. In 1996, she returned to theater for the revival of Bus Stop, where she co-starred with then boyfriend Billy Crudup, and How I Learned to Drive, for which she received the OBIE for her captivating portrayal of a child abuse victim.

Subsequent film work included roles in The Portrait of a Lady (1996) with Nicole Kidman, 1997's Murder in Mind and The Maker, the made-for-TV Saint Maybe and Legalese (both 1998), and opposite Patricia Arquette in the thriller Goodbye Lover (also 1998). That same year, she won critical acclaim for her performance as a Cockney dominatrix in the comedic play Communicating Doors.

In 1999, she starred in The Five Senses, Let the Devil Wear Black and The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn, a CBS TV movie co-starring Sidney Poitier.

In 2000, Parker starred as a grief-stricken, troubled young woman in Proof, which premiered at the Manhattan Theatre Club before moving to Broadway by year's end. Mary-Louise won the Tony Award for Best Actress in 2001 for her performance. She joined the cast of NBC's The West Wing that fall, playing seductive lobbyist Amy Gardner, and earned an Emmy nomination in 2002 for the role. That same year, she played wife Bonnie Hanssen in the made-for-TV movie Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story (2002), and was featured in Red Dragon, the prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, with Anthony Hopkins and Edward Norton.

Parker co-starred in the acclaimed HBO miniseries Angels in America (2003), along with Meryl Streep, Al Pacino and Emma Thompson. Her turn as a Mormon wife garnered her a SAG nomination and the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, in 2004.

After seven years together, Parker and Crudup split up in 2003. She was seven months pregnant at the time of the breakup, and gave birth to son William Atticus on January 7, 2004. That year she added The Best Thief in the World, Saved! and Romance & Cigarettes to her resume.