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IMDbPro

Mary-Louise Parker

  • Actress
  • Producer
  • Additional Crew
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Mary-Louise Parker
Take a closer look at the various roles Mary-Louise Parker has played throughout her acting career.
Play clip1:26
Mary-Louise Parker: Movie & TV Moments
99+ Videos
99+ Photos
Southern-bred Mary-Louise Parker was born on August 2, 1964 in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, the youngest of four children of Judge John Morgan Parker, and the former Caroline Louise Morell. She is of mostly Swedish, English, and Scottish descent. Her father's occupation took the family both around the country and abroad while growing up.

Parker showed potential in her teens and majored in acting in her college years, graduating from the North Carolina School of the Arts. Beginning her acting career with a part on the daytime soap Ryan's Hope (1975), Mary decided to test the waters in New York, and after work on the off-Broadway stage in the late 1980s, made her Broadway debut with "Prelude to a Kiss" in 1990, where she won the Theatre World Award, the Clarence Derwent Award and a Tony nomination.

Films and TV quickly followed and she quickly gained attention. She provided both poignant and amusing as the token femme friend to a group of gay men in the AIDS drama Longtime Companion (1989), but really caught fire with her feisty, standout performance in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), holding her own against such female powerhouses as Jessica Tandy, Kathy Bates and Mary Stuart Masterson. Dubbed by some as the "long-suffering girl next door," she played such noble offbeat miserables and cast-asides in Grand Canyon (1991), Naked in New York (1993), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), The Client (1994) Boys on the Side (1995), in which she was the AIDS victim this time, The Portrait of a Lady (1996), The Maker (1997), Let the Devil Wear Black (1999), Red Dragon (2002) and Pipe Dream (2002).

Preferring quality over quantity, she perfected her craft with offbeat roles in independent features and did not abandon her theater roots. She copped a slew of acting prizes for her stage work in "How I Learned to Drive" (1996) and, most notably, "Proof" in 2000, wherein she won nearly every award there is to attain, including the prestigious Tony. Her marquee name still does not command what it should, but a picture or production with Mary-Louise Parker in it usually guarantees a strong critical reception. Unmarried, she did enter into a longtime companionship with actor Billy Crudup after the twosome appeared opposite each other in the 1996 play, "Bus Stop". They went their separate ways in 2003, amid major controversy (she was pregnant at the time).

Mary Louise continues to divide her time equally and skillfully on TV, film and the stage. The powerful TV miniseries adaptation of Tony Kushner heralded award-winning Broadway play Angels in America (2003), directed by Mike Nichols, earned the actress supporting performance Golden Globe and Emmy awards. She also earned a Tony nomination for the Broadway show, "Reckless", a year later but truly turned heads and wowed audiences the year after that in the highly acclaimed 7-season Showtime series Weeds (2005), earning another Golden Globe and several Emmy nominations for her amazing performance as Nancy Botwin, a relatively naïve suburban housewife and mother who courts serious trouble with the law and drug cartels when she turns into a neighborhood drug dealer for sustenance after her husband dies suddenly.

Into the millennium, Mary has continued with compelling work in such films as RED 2 (2013), R.I.P.D. (2013), Jamesy Boy (2014), Behaving Badly (2014), Chronically Metropolitan (2016), Golden Exits (2017) and Red Sparrow (2018). TV roles have included recurring roles on The Blacklist (2013) and the sci-fi thriller Mr. Mercedes (2017).

Her first child is eighteen-year-old William Atticus Parker -- a director, writer and actor. Adopting a second child from Ethiopia, Mary Louise was acknowledged in 2013 for her significant contributions to Hope North, an organization that works in the educating and healing of young victims caught in Uganda's civil war. Her memoir-in-letters, Dear Mr. You, came out in 2015.
BornAugust 2, 1964
  • More at IMDbPro
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BornAugust 2, 1964
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Top 5,000110
  • View contact info at IMDbPro
  • Won 1 Primetime Emmy

Photos475

Mary-Louise Parker in A Place for Annie (1994)
Mary-Louise Parker and Sissy Spacek in A Place for Annie (1994)
Mary-Louise Parker, Sissy Spacek, Jack Noseworthy, and Joan Plowright in A Place for Annie (1994)
Mary-Louise Parker and Lily Rabe in Golden Exits (2017)
Mary-Louise Parker in Golden Exits (2017)
Mary-Louise Parker and Chloë Sevigny in Golden Exits (2017)
Mary-Louise Parker and Sidney Poitier in The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn (1999)
Mary-Louise Parker in The West Wing (1999)
Mary-Louise Parker and Meryl Streep in Angels in America (2003)
Mary-Louise Parker in Billions (2016)
Mary-Louise Parker in Billions (2016)
Mary-Louise Parker and Paul Giamatti in Billions (2016)

Known for

Mary-Louise Parker in Weeds (2005)
Weeds
7.9
TV Series
  • Nancy Botwin
Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, and Mary-Louise Parker in RED (2010)
RED
7.0
  • Sarah Ross
  • 2010
Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds in R.I.P.D. (2013)
R.I.P.D.
5.6
  • Proctor
  • 2013
Anthony Hopkins, Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Mary-Louise Parker, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Lee Byung-hun in RED 2 (2013)
RED 2
6.6
  • Sarah
  • 2013

Credits

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IMDbPro

Actress

  • Seneca - On the Creation of Earthquakes
    • Post-production
  • Face
    • Pre-production
  • Jaden Michael and Colin Kaepernick in Colin in Black & White (2021)
    Colin in Black & White
  • The Same Storm (2021)
    The Same Storm
  • Samia in Samia: Ode to Artifice (2019)
    Samia: Ode to Artifice
  • Compliance
  • Jennifer Lawrence in Red Sparrow (2018)
    Red Sparrow
  • Brendan Gleeson in Mr. Mercedes (2017)
    Mr. Mercedes
  • Billions (2016)
    Billions
  • Austin P. McKenzie in When We Rise (2017)
    When We Rise
  • Emily Browning in Golden Exits (2017)
    Golden Exits
  • Mary-Louise Parker, Chris Noth, Josh Peck, Ashley Benson, Addison Timlin, and Shiloh Fernandez in Chronically Metropolitan (2016)
    Chronically Metropolitan
    • (as Mary Louise Parker)
  • Feed Me
  • The Blacklist (2013)
    The Blacklist
  • Elisabeth Shue, Mary-Louise Parker, Heather Graham, Selena Gomez, and Nat Wolff in Behaving Badly (2014)
    Behaving Badly
  • James Woods, Mary-Louise Parker, Ving Rhames, Michael Trotter, Taissa Farmiga, and Spencer Rocco Lofranco in Jamesy Boy (2014)
    Jamesy Boy
  • Andy Garcia and Mary-Louise Parker in Christmas in Conway (2013)
    Christmas in Conway

Additional Crew

  • Romance & Cigarettes (2005)
    Romance & Cigarettes
    • (as Moore and Parker)
  • In-development projects at IMDbPro

Videos110

Mary-Louise Parker: Movie & TV Moments
Clip 1:26
Mary-Louise Parker: Movie & TV Moments
Howl: "Artistic Merit"
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Howl: "Artistic Merit"
Solitary Man
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Solitary Man
Solitary Man
Clip 0:45
Solitary Man
Solitary Man
Clip 0:52
Solitary Man
Solitary Man
Clip 1:11
Solitary Man
Solitary Man
Clip 0:57
Solitary Man
Solitary Man
Clip 1:02
Solitary Man
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Clip 0:42
The Spiderwick Chronicles
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Clip 1:04
The Spiderwick Chronicles
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Clip 1:03
The Spiderwick Chronicles
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Clip 0:42
The Spiderwick Chronicles

Personal details

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    • August 2, 1964
    • Fort Jackson, South Carolina, USA
    • (Sibling)
  • Other works
    Music video for Bonnie Raitt: "You Got It"
  • Publicity listings
    • 4 Interviews
    • 12 Articles
    • 6 Pictorials
    • 13 Magazine Cover Photos

Did you know

Edit
  • Trivia
    The Counting Crows song "Butterfly in Reverse" was written for her.
  • Quotes
    [on Demián Bichir in Weeds (2005)] I might use a word that sounds pretentious, but his performance was almost holy. It was beyond being just about depth. He made the film into a Greek tragedy. And he is one of the few actors I know who could make that part humane. He is pretty delicious.
    • Often plays put-upon women who have a sense of ironic humor.

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