Marcia Gay Harden extracted from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License

Marcia Gay Harden
Harden at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	August 14, 1959 (1959-08-14) (age 50) La Jolla, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1979 – present
Spouse(s)	Thaddaeus Scheel (1996 – present)

Marcia Gay Harden (born August 14, 1959) is an American actress. She has appeared in films, television, and the theatre. Harden is a winner of the Tony Award and the Academy Award.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Personal life 4 Filmography 5 References 6 External links

Early life

Harden, one of five children, was born in La Jolla, San Diego, California, the daughter of Beverly (née Bushfield), a housewife, and Thaddeus Harold Harden, a Texas native who was an officer in the United States Navy.¹ One of Harden's siblings is named Thaddeus, as is her spouse. Harden's family frequently moved because of her father's job, living in Japan, Germany, Greece, California and Maryland.² She graduated from Surrattsville High School in Clinton, Maryland in 1977, the University of Texas at Austin with a BA in theatre, and the graduate theatre program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts with a Master of Fine Arts.

Career

Harden's first film role was in a 1979 student-produced movie at the University of Texas at Austin. Throughout the 1980s, she appeared in several television programs, including Simon and Simon, Kojak, and CBS Summer Playhouse. She appeared in the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing (1990), a 1930s mobster drama in which she first gained wide exposure. In 1992, she played actress Ava Gardner alongside Philip Casnoff as Frank Sinatra in the made for TV miniseries Sinatra. Throughout the 1990s, she continued to appear in films and television. Notable film roles include The Imagemaker (1986), her first screen role, in which she played a stage manager; the Disney sci-fi comedy Flubber (1997), a popular hit in which she co-starred with Robin Williams; the supernatural drama Meet Joe Black (1998); Labor of Love (1998), a Lifetime Television movie in which she starred with David Marshall Grant; and Space Cowboys (2000), an all-star adventure-drama of aging astronauts.

In 1993, Harden debuted on Broadway in the role of Harper Pitt (and others) in Tony Kushner's Angels in America. The role earned her critical acclaim and she received a Tony Award nomination (Best Featured Actress in a Play). The winner in that category was Debra Monk in Redwood Curtain.

Harden was awarded the 2000 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of painter Lee Krasner in Pollock (2000). In 2003, she was again nominated in the same category for Mystic River.

Harden guest-starred as FBI undercover agent Dana Lewis posing as a white-supremacist in "Raw", an episode of the popular crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2007, this role earned Harden her first Emmy Award nomination for best guest actress in a drama series. She reprised the role in the series' eighth season premiere.

In 2007, Harden appeared in several films, including Sean Penn's critically acclaimed Into the Wild, and Frank Darabont's The Mist, based on the novella by Stephen King.

In 2008, she appeared in Home, of which her co-stars include her daughter, Eulala Scheel, and the comedy The Maiden Heist with Christopher Walken and Morgan Freeman. Harden starred in the Christmas Cottage (2008), a story of the early artistic beginnings of the Painter of Light, Thomas Kinkade. In 2009, she appeared as a regular on the critically-acclaimed FX series Damages as a shrewd corporate attorney, opposite Glenn Close and William Hurt. Harden received a 2009 Emmy Award nomination for her role in The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, a TV film also starring Oscar winner Anna Paquin. She was a Best Supporting Actress in a TV Movie/Miniseries nominee, and lost to Shohreh Aghdashloo. If she had won this Emmy, Marcia Gay Harden would have entered the elite group of 'triple-crown' actors; actors who have won the three acting awards of the highest honor: the Academy Award (film), the Tony Award (stage) and the Emmy Award (television). She is yet to win an Emmy.

In 2009, Harden returned to Broadway in Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage. She starred with James Gandolfini, Hope Davis and Jeff Daniels. Each lead actor was nominated for the Tony Award and on June 8, Harden won Best Actress in a Play.³

Personal life

Harden is married to Thaddaeus Scheel, with whom she worked on The Spitfire Grill (1996), and the couple have three children: a daughter, Eulala Grace Scheel, and twins Julitta Dee Scheel and Hudson Harden Scheel. The family lives in Harlem, New York. On December 15, 2003, her young nephew Sander Waring Harden and niece Audrey Gay Harden died as a result of a tragic fire in their Queens, New York, apartment, owned by her former sister-in-law Rebecca Harden who later died from injuries received in the fire. Rebecca Harden was divorced from the children's father, Thaddeus Harden, who is Marcia Gay Harden's brother.^{citation needed}

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1979	Not Only Strangers
1986	The Imagemaker	Stage Manager
1990	Miller's Crossing	Verna Bernbaum
1991	Fever	Lacy	TV film
	Late for Dinner	Joy Husband
1992	Crush	Lane	Entered into the 1992 Cannes Film Festival
	Sinatra	Ava Gardner	TV film
	Used People	Norma
1993	Geoffrey Beene 30	Woman
1994	Safe Passage	Cynthia
1996	The Spitfire Grill	Shelby Goddard
	The Daytrippers	Libby
	The First Wives Club	Dr. Leslie Rosen	National Board of Review Award for Best Cast
	Far Harbor	Arabella
	Spy Hard	Miss Cheevus
1997	Flubber	Dr. Sara Jean Reynolds
1998	Desperate Measures	Dr. Samantha Hawkins
	Meet Joe Black	Allison Parrish
	Labor of Love	Annie Pines	TV film
1999	Curtain Call	Michelle Tippet
2000	Space Cowboys	Sara Holland
	Pollock	Lee Krasner	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated - Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female
2001	Gaudi Afternoon	Frankie Stevens
2003	Mystic River	Celeste Boyle	Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cast Seattle Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated - Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated - Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated - Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated - Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture Drama Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Cast - Motion Picture
	Just Like Mona
	Casa de los babys	Nan
	Mona Lisa Smile	Nancy Abbey
2004	Welcome to Mooseport	Grace Sutherland
	P.S.	Missy Goldberg
2005	Bad News Bears	Liz Whitewood
	American Gun	Janet Huttenson	Nominated - Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female Felicity: An American Girl Adventure Mrs. (Martha) Merriman
2005, 2006	Law & Order: Special Victims Unit	Dana Lewis / Star Morrison	Episodes: "Raw" and "Informed" Nominated - Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress - Drama Series
2006	American Dreamz	First Lady
	The Dead Girl	Melora
	The Hoax	Edith Irving
	Canvas	Mary Marino
	In From the Night	Melora	TV film
2007	The Invisible	Diane Powell
	The Mist	Mrs. Carmody
	Into the Wild	Billie McCandless	Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Cast - Motion Picture
	Rails & Ties	Megan Stark
2008	Home	Inga
	Thomas Kinkade's Home for Christmas	Maryanne Kinkade
2009	The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler	Janina Sendler	premiere: 19 April
	Damages	Claire Maddox	TV series
	The Maiden Heist	Rose	Limited Release
	Whip It!	Brooke Cavendar
2010	Noah's Ark: The New Beginning	Aamah	voice; post-production
	The No Game	Barbara	pre-production

References

External links

• Marcia Gay Harden at the Internet Movie Database
• Marcia Gay Harden at the Internet Broadway Database
• Marcia Gay Harden at Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Marcia Gay Harden at TV.com
• Marcia Gay Harden 2006 Interview on Sidewalks Entertainment

v • d • e Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Maureen Stapleton (1981) · Jessica Lange (1982) · Linda Hunt (1983) · Peggy Ashcroft (1984) · Anjelica Huston (1985) · Dianne Wiest (1986) · Olympia Dukakis (1987) · Geena Davis (1988) · Brenda Fricker (1989) · Whoopi Goldberg (1990) · Mercedes Ruehl (1991) · Marisa Tomei (1992) · Anna Paquin (1993) · Dianne Wiest (1994) · Mira Sorvino (1995) · Juliette Binoche (1996) · Kim Basinger (1997) · Judi Dench (1998) · Angelina Jolie (1999) · Marcia Gay Harden (2000) Complete list · (1928–1940) · (1941–1960) · (1961–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001–present)

v • d • e Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play Mary-Louise Parker (2001) · Lindsay Duncan (2002) · Vanessa Redgrave (2003) · Phylicia Rashād (2004) · Cherry Jones (2005) · Cynthia Nixon (2006) · Julie White (2007) · Deanna Dunagan (2008) · Marcia Gay Harden (2009) Complete list: (1947–1975) · (1976–2000) · (2001–present)

Persondata
NAME	Harden, Marcia Gay
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Actress
DATE OF BIRTH	August 14, 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH	La Jolla, California, U.S.
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH