THE 59TH ANNUAL PRIMETIME EMMYS AWARDS

Mary-Louise Parker
Biography

* Birthplace: Fort Jackson, South Carolina
* Birthday: August 2, 1964

A versatile and pretty theater veteran with a distinctive voice and delicate features, Mary-Louise Parker was a well-traveled "army brat" who began her stage career in New York City during the mid-1980s. She earned a 1990 Tony nomination for her performance as a young bride who accidentally swaps souls with an old man in Craig Lucas' "Prelude to a Kiss" and later picked up an OBIE for her riveting portrayal of a victim of child abuse in Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize-winning "How I Learned to Drive" (1997). In between, she essayed roles as diverse as a woman driven to madness by the birth of a deformed child in "Babylon Gardens" (1991), a schemingly ambitious actress in the black comedy "Four Dogs and a Bone" (1993) and the vocally-challenged saloon singer Cherie in a 1996 revival of "Bus Stop", opposite Billy Crudup. In 1998, Parker won critical kudos as a Cockney dominatrix who overhears a dying man's confession and attempts to save his victims by traveling back in time in Alan Ayckbourn's razor-sharp comedy "Communicating Doors.” The actress' next stage appearance saw her offer an acclaimed turn (which netted her a Tony Award) as a mathematician coping with the legacy of her father in the Pulitzer-winning "Proof.”

Parker made her film debut as an abused girlfriend in "Signs of Life" (1989) and was the best friend of a gay man dealing with the AIDS crisis in "Longtime Companion" (1989), scripted by Lucas and directed by Norman Rene. She had a nice turn as a lonely secretary infatuated with her employer (Kevin Kline) in Lawrence Kasdan's "Grand Canyon", but it was her breakthrough part as an abused wife empowered by her friendship with a female cafe owner (Mary Stuart Masterson) in the sleeper "Fried Green Tomatoes" (both 1991) that really opened eyes to her facility for complex characterizations.