Marcia Gay Harden (born August 14, 1959) is an Academy Award and Tony Award-winning, as well as an Emmy Award-nominated American actress.
Early life
Harden, one of five children, was born in La Jolla, 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 her siblings is also named Thaddeus, as is her present 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
In 1992 she played actress Ava Gardner alongside Philip Casnoff as Frank Sinatra in the made for TV miniseries Sinatra. Harden debuted on Broadway in Tony Kushner's Angels in America in 1993, for which she received a Tony Award nomination (Best Featured Actress in a Play) as Harper Pitt (and others). For her film work, she won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for playing painter Lee Krasner in Pollock (2000), and was nominated in the same category for Mystic River (2003).
Other notable films include The Imagemaker (1986), her first screen role, in which she played a stage manager; the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing (1990), a 1930s mobster drama in which she gained her first wide exposure; 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.
She also guest-starred as an FBI undercover agent (named Dana Lewis; undercover alias Star Morrison) posing as a white-supremacist in "Raw", an episode of the popular crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award for best guest actress in a drama series. She recently 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 the Frank Darabont directed "The Mist", based on the story by Stephen King. Her performance as Mrs. Carmody, the religious zealot, was highly acclaimed as one of the year's most talked-about performances. For her work in that film, she was recently honored with the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress of 2007. She has also received two nominations for the Independent Spirit Award.
She recently completed filming on Home, in which her co-stars include her daughter, Eulala Scheel, and the comedy The Lonely Maiden with Christopher Walken and Morgan Freeman.
In 2009, she appears as a regular on the critically-acclaimed FX series Damages as a shrewd corporate attorney opposite Glenn Close and William Hurt. She has returned to the stage in 2009, appearing in Broadway's God of Carnage with James Gandolfini, Hope Davis and Jeff Daniels, and received a Tony Award on June 8th, 2009 for Best Actress in a Play for her work in God of Carnage.3 Mrs. Harden stars in the Christmas Cottage (2008), a story of the early artistic beginnings of the Painter of Light, Thomas Kinkade http://www.thechristmascottagemovie.com
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 the 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 childrens' father, Thaddeus Harden, who is Ms. Harden's brother.
Filmography
References
External links
![video Clip from the TV movie,](../viewVideo.html?title=MARCIA GAY HARDEN as AVA GARDNERYouTube=YouTube&summary=Clip from the TV movie, "Sinatra" which starred Philip Casnoff as Frank Sinatra and Marcia Gay Harden as Ava.&link=http://www.youtube.com/v/bvBHoiFbGP4&fs=1&hl=en&source=uds&autoplay=1&thumb=http://2.gvt0.com/vi/bvBHoiFbGP4/default.jpg&celebrity=Marcia Gay Harden&videoType=YouTube)
![video Marcia Gay Harden & her daughter Eulala Scheel talk to Stephen Holt about playing a mother and daughter in the new film](../viewVideo.html?title=Marcia Gay Harden,Eulala Scheel & Stephen Holt @ Montreal ...YouTube=YouTube&summary=Marcia Gay Harden & her daughter Eulala Scheel talk to Stephen Holt about playing a mother and daughter in the new film "Home" at the Montreal ...&link=http://www.youtube.com/v/819ij-hJmKs&fs=1&hl=en&source=uds&autoplay=1&thumb=http://3.gvt0.com/vi/819ij-hJmKs/default.jpg&celebrity=Marcia Gay Harden&videoType=YouTube)
![video Marcia Gay Harden dishes her Tony Awards nomination for](../viewVideo.html?title=Marcia Gay Harden on Tonys, Oscar and God of CarnageYouTube=YouTube&summary=Marcia Gay Harden dishes her Tony Awards nomination for "God of Carnage" plus past Oscars win for "Pollock" with Gold Derby blogger Tom ONeil of ...&link=http://www.youtube.com/v/-vIAwPJOz2M&fs=1&hl=en&source=uds&autoplay=1&thumb=http://3.gvt0.com/vi/-vIAwPJOz2M/default.jpg&celebrity=Marcia Gay Harden&videoType=YouTube)
