Patricia Clarkson
Patricia Clarkson | |
|---|---|
 Clarkson at the 2010 Metropolitan Opera opening night of Das Rheingold | |
| Born | Patricia Davies Clarkson December 29, 1959 New Orleans, Louisiana, United States |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1985–present |
Patricia Davies Clarkson (born December 29, 1959) is an American actress. After studying drama on the East Coast, Clarkson launched her acting career in 1985 (a guest spot on Spenser: for Hire being one of her first acting jobs), and has worked steadily in both film and television. She twice won the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in Six Feet Under. Film roles included The Green Mile, Far From Heaven, Shutter Island and The Station Agent, and she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Pieces of April (2003).
Early life
Clarkson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Jacquelyn (née Brechtel), a local New Orleans politician and councilwoman, and Arthur, a school administrator who worked at the Department of Medicine of Louisiana State University.[1][2]
Clarkson studied drama at Fordham University, where she graduated summa cum laude, and earned her MFA at the Yale School of Drama[3] before making her film debut in The Untouchables in 1987.
Career
Clarkson's Broadway theatre credits include The House of Blue Leaves and Eastern Standard.
Clarkson had supporting roles in a series of high-profile films in her early career. Her first movie role, at age 27, was as the wife of Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) in The Untouchables. She was also featured in The Dead Pool, Rocket Gibraltar and Everybody's All-American. She starred in the short-run television series Davis Rules, and in the miniseries Alex Haley's Queen. More often a character actor than a leading woman, she has also appeared in such major films as The Green Mile (1999), Far from Heaven (2002), Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) and Lars and the Real Girl (2007). Her breakthrough role was in High Art (1998) where her portrayal of Greta, a German, drug-addicted lesbian former model, gained rave reviews. She has said about acting, "I’m deeply invested in everything I do, and it’s a good thing, because acting is the only thing I know how to do."[4]
In 2002, she originated her role as Sarah O'Connor (a.k.a. "Aunt Sarah") in HBO's Six Feet Under. She went on to win an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress that year for her performance, a feat she repeated for the same role in 2006.
In 2003, she gained critical acclaim and a Special Jury Prize for her work in four films that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival: All the Real Girls, The Baroness and the Pig, The Station Agent and Pieces of April.[5][6] Later in the year, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Pieces of April, in which she plays an acerbic mother dying of cancer.
In 2006, she portrayed Sadie Burke, in All the King's Men, set in her native New Orleans. In 2008, she had supporting roles in Elegy, as a womanizer's put-upon girlfriend, and Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona as an unhappily-married housewife.
In the summer of 2008 producer Gerald Peary approached Clarkson to ask if she would do the voice-over for the documentary film For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. Says Peary, "She agreed to do the narration ... And she was so nice, and so cooperative, and so prepared, and so intelligent. And one of the key reasons she wanted to do the movie was that she regularly reads criticism, and has a genuine respect for the critic profession.[7]
Clarkson returned to New Orleans for the January 17, 2009, reopening of the Mahalia Jackson Theatre for the Performing Arts. She served as Master of Ceremonies for a gala featuring Plácido Domingo in concert with the New Orleans Opera, conducted by Robert Lyall.[8] She also made a cameo appearance in the Saturday Night Live Digital Short "Motherlover" on May 9, 2009. The video featured Andy Samberg, Justin Timberlake, and Susan Sarandon. She reprised the role May 21, 2011 in the Digital Short 3-Way (The Golden Rule). In 2010, she starred in Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island.[9] Clarkson was honored by the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival when she received one of the 2010 Volta awards for achievements in her career.[10]
In response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Clarkson published a post for Natural Resources Defense Council's magazine OnEarth. She also released a public service announcement talking about her experiences growing up in New Orleans. Both pieces were released July 26, 2010.[11]
Clarkson guest starred in the fourth season of NBC's Parks and Recreation as Parks Department head Ron Swanson's first wife, Tammy One.[12]
Clarkson is single. She has never married.
Filmography
Television
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1985 | Spenser: For Hire | Elizabeth Haller | 1 episode |
| 1986 | The Equalizer | Deborah Wade | 1 episode |
| 1990 | The Old Man and the Sea | Mary Pruitt | |
| 1990 | Tales from the Crypt | Suzy | 1 episode |
| 1990 | Law & Order | Laura Winthrop | 1 episode |
| 1991 | Davis Rules | Cosmo Yeargin | 8 episodes |
| 1992 | Blind Man's Bluff | Dr. Virginia Hertz | |
| 1992 | An American Story | Barbara Meade | |
| 1992 | Legacy of Lies | Pat Rafael | |
| 1992 | Four Eyes and Six Guns | Lucy Laughton | |
| 1993 | Queen | Elizabeth "Lizzie" Perkins | Television miniseries |
| 1993 | Caught in the Act | Meg | |
| 1994 | She Led Two Lives | Desiree Parnell | |
| 1995–96 | Murder One | Annie Hoffman | 20 episodes |
| 1996 | London Suite | Diana Nichols | |
| 1996 | The Wedding | Della McNeil | |
| 2000 | Wonderland | Mrs. Tammy Banger | 8 episodes |
| 2001 | Frasier | Claire French | 5 episodes |
| 2002 | Carrie | Margaret White | |
| 2002–05 | Six Feet Under | Sarah O'Connor | 7 episodes Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress – Drama Series (2002, 2006) |
| 2007 | American Masters | Narrator | 1 episode |
| 2009 | Saturday Night Live | Mother of Justin Timberlake's character | May 9, 2009 SNL Digital Short "Motherlover" |
| 2011 | Saturday Night Live | Mother of Justin Timberlake's character | May 21, 2011 SNL Digital Short 3-Way (The Golden Rule) |
| 2011 | Parks and Recreation | Tammy Swanson I |
References
- ^ Patricia Clarkson Biography (1959-)
- ^ Patricia Clarkson Biography - Yahoo! Movies
- ^ "Clarkson Shifts Her Weight" in the Washington Times, 2008, March 28, pp. D1
- ^ Altmann, Howard 'Patricia Clarkson', BOMB Magazine, Spring 2010, retrieved July 21, 2011
- ^ Gordon, Devin, "A Woman on the Verge of a Breakthrough" in Newsweek, 20 October 2003, pp. 11
- ^ "Move Over Sundance Kids, There's a New...Star of Indies", New York Post, 23 January 2003, p. 39
- ^ SXSW '09 Interview: For the Love of Movies Director & Film Critic Gerald Peary by Erik Childress
- ^ Theodore P. Mahne, "Star Emcee Patricia Clarkson Shares in the Excitement over Tonight's Opera Gala", The Times-Picayune, 2009 January 17, pp. C1, C3
- ^ "Video Interviews: Shutter Island - Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, Dennis Lehane", DreadCentral.com
- ^ JDIFF announce recipients of this year's Volta Awards, Filmbase; retrieved 2010-02-24
- ^ OneEarth.org
- ^ [1]
External links
- Patricia Clarkson at IMDb
- Patricia Clarkson at the Internet Broadway Database
- Clarkson at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Patricia Clarkson at AllMovie
- Template:Ymovies name
- "Patricia Clarkson, Directors' Stealth Weapon" Michelle Orange, The New York Times, 30 July 2010
- 1959 births
- Living people
- Actors from Louisiana
- American film actors
- American people of Catalan descent
- American people of Spanish descent
- American stage actors
- American television actors
- Emmy Award winners
- Fordham University alumni
- People from New Orleans, Louisiana
- Saturn Award winners
- Yale School of Drama alumni