Marcia Gay Harden's Main TV Roles Show Character(s) The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler Janina Send… Sex and Lies in Sin City Becky Binion The Education of Max Bickford Andrea Hask…

Main Movie Roles 2009 - Whip It 2009 - The Maiden Heist 2007 - The Mist 2007 - The Invisible 2007 - Rails & Ties 2007 - Into the Wild 2006 - American Dreamz 2005 - Bad News Bears 2005 - American Gun 2004 - Welcome to Mooseport 2003 - Casa de los Babys 2003 - Mona Lisa Smile 2003 - Mystic River 2000 - Space Cowboys 2000 - Pollock 1999 - Curtain Call 1998 - Meet Joe Black 1998 - Desperate Measures 1997 - Flubber 1996 - The First Wives Club 1996 - The Spitfire Grill 1996 - Spy Hard 1992 - Used People 1990 - Miller's Crossing

BIOGRAPHY:

Marcia Gay Harden was born on August 14, 1959, in La Jolla, California, the third of five children. Her father was in the military, and the family relocated often -- she first became interested in the theater when the family was living in Greece, and she had attended plays in Athens. Harden began her college education at American universities in Europe and returned to the US to complete her studies at the University of Texas in 1983; went on to earn an MFA at NYU, and, thereafter, embarked on her acting career.

Although she had acted in a movie as early as 1986, in the little-known The Imagemaker (1986), her first mainstream role, coming alongside some TV movie work, was as a sultry femme fatale in the Coen Brothers' cleverly offbeat homage to the gangster movie, Miller's Crossing (1990). Harden received good reviews for her sultry performance as Verna, a seductive, trouble-making moll. Harden thereafter worked steadily in supporting roles, including the portrayal of Ava Gardner in Sinatra (1992) (TV), a television biopic about Frank Sinatra. Harden also worked in the theater and, in 1993, was part of the Broadway cast of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America", playing Harper, the alienated wife of a closeted gay man. It was a demanding dramatic role, and Harden won acclaim for her work, including a Tony award nomination. She returned to movie making in the mid-1990s, continuing to turn in superb supporting performances in films and television.

Harden's road to success was a long one, her work generally being overlooked because the productions were either critically panned or ignored by audiences. However, it was just a matter of time before Harden got a chance to truly show her quality on-screen, and that time came in 2000, with Ed Harris (I)'s Pollock (2000), in which she played Lee Krasner, artist and long-suffering wife of Jackson Pollock. Harden's performance was deeply moving and unforgettable and earned her the Oscar and New York Film Critic's Circle awards for best supporting actress. Continuing to work prolifically in features and television, she earned another Oscar nomination in 2003 for her supporting role in Clint Eastwood's Mystic River (2003), Harden having earlier worked with Eastwood in 2000's Space Cowboys (2000).

Harden's work often makes otherwise mediocre productions worth watching, fully inhabiting any character she portrays. She married Thaddaeus Scheel, with whom she worked on The Spitfire Grill (1996), in 1996 and the couple have three children, a daughter Eulala Scheel and twins Julitta and Hudson.


TRIVIA:

• She and her husband, 'Thaddaeus Scheel' (qv), have three children: a daughter, 'Eulala Scheel' (qv), born in September 1998, and twins, a boy named Hudson Harden Scheel and a girl named Julitta Dee Harden Scheel, born on 22 April 2004 in New York.
• (1990) Listed as one of twelve "Promising New Actors of 1990" in John Willis' Screen World, Vol. 42.
• Ms. Harden was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 2008.
• Achieved a degree of notoriety for making the rounds of the spring 2004 awards ceremonies while near-term with twins. When asked about all of the talk her hugely-pregnant figure was generating, she was quoted as saying that, when it comes to pregnancy, when you've got it, flaunt it.
• On December 15, 2003, her young nephew and niece were killed in a tragic fire. The deaths occurred when the Queens, New York, apartment, owned by her former sister-in-law, went up in flames after a burning candle set a sofa on fire. Her ex-sister-in-law also later died from injuries received in the fire.
• She was the first University of Texas at Austin graduate to win an Oscar. She won for Best Supporting Actress in 2001 for _Pollock (2000)_ (qv). The second UT grad to win was 'Renée Zellweger' (qv) in 2004.
• Inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame in March 2005 in Austin, Texas.
• MFA in Acting - New York University, Tisch School of the Arts (1988).