Oscar Profile #323: Mary Steenburgen

Born February 8, 1953 in Newport, Arkansas to Nellie May (Wall) and Maurice Steenburgen, a freight-train conductor, Mary Steenburgen grew up tap-dancing her way through talent shows and school functions. Active in school drama classes as well, she appeared in numerous high school plays, enrolling in Hendrix College upon graduation. At the recommendation of her drama professor, she left college in 1972 and moved to New York to audition for the Neighborhood Playhouse to continue her education and won a spot.

Steenburgen worked a series of jobs while continuing to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse and was discovered by Jack Nicholson at Paramount’s New York offices six years later. He immediately cast her as his leading lady in 1978’s Goin’ South. She met and fell in love with future husband Malcolm McDowell, the star of her second film, 1979’s Time After Time, on the set of the film. Her third film, 1980’s Melvin and Howard, won her an Oscar. She would receive a Golden Globe nomination for her fourth, 1981’s Ragtime.

Married to McDowell in 1980, they would have two children together, future actress Lily, who was born in 1981, and future director Charlie, partner of Rooney Mara, who was born in 1983. Still immensely popular, Steenburgen would limit her film appearances to those in which she could have her children with her during filming. During the 1980s she would alternate leads in 1983’s Cross Creek and Romantic Comedy and 1987’s One Magic Christmas and Dead of Winter with smaller roles in 1982’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, 1987’s The Whales of August and The End of the Line and 1989’s Miss Firecracker and Parenthood. In 1990, the year of her divorce from McDowell, with whom she still maintains a friendship, she played Christopher Lloyd’s love interest in Back to the Future III at the urging of her children.

The 1990s saw Steenburgen in fewer films, but she was still a welcome participant in such well-regarded works as 1993’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Philadelphia and 1995’s The Grass Harp and Nixon as Hannah Nixon, the future President’s mother. 1995 was also the year she married second husband, Ted Danson with whom she remains married.

From 2003-2005, Steenburgen played Amber Tamblyn’s mother in the popular Joan of Arcadia TV series. She also had a recurring role as herself in TV’s Curb Your Enthusiasm in one episode in 2001 and more from 2007-2009. Her infrequent films during the decade included 2009’s The Proposal.

In the current decade, Steenburgen has had recurring roles in six TV series thus far, most notably in Justified, Orange Is the New Black and The Last Man on Earth. Her recent films include 2011’s The Help, 2013’s Last Vegas and 2015’s A Walk in the Woods.
A long-time friend of Hillary Rodham Clinton, she campaigned for her for President in 2008 and spoke in her behalf at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

TIME AFTER TIME, directed by Nicholas Meyer (1979)

One of the best time-travel films yet made, Steenburgen met and fell in love with star and future husband, Malcolm McDowell, during the film, the two emulating the actions of their characters and/or vice versa. McDowell plays H.G. Wells who pursues Jack the Ripper (David Warner) via his time machine from the late 19th Century to contemporary San Francisco. Steenburgen is the bank officer who helps him in the present. Eleven years later, as her marriage to McDowell was ending, Steenburgen played a reverse role as the woman Christopher Lloyd meets and falls in love with when he goes back in time in Back to the Future III.

MELVIN AND HOWARD, directed by Jonathan Demme (1954)

Steenburgen won just about all the awards there were for supporting actresses, up to and including the Oscar, for her portrayal of Marvin Dumar’s would-be showgirl wife in this surreal comedy-drama based on real life Dumar’s claim that Howard Hughes (Jason Robards) left him $156,000 in his will. Nine years before Hughes’ death, Dumar gave a ride to a rambling old man who claimed to be the eccentric producer, but Dumar didn’t believe him and wouldn’t until he received Hughes’ only known will in the mail. Demme won the New York Film Critics award for Best Director and the film was first runner-up to Ordinary Poeple for Best Film.

CROSS CREEK, directed by Martin Ritt (1983)

Based on Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ book, Steenburgen plays the famed writer, author of The Yearling. The film focuses on Rawlings’ life in rural Florida and her writing of her most famous novel. The actress is excellent as expected, but also given critical huzzahs for their performances were Peter Coyotoe as her publisher, Alfre Woodward as her housekeeper and Rip Torn and Dana Hill as a father and daughter whose lives formed the basis the father and son played by Gregory Peck and Claude Jarman, Jr. in the 1946 film version of The Yearling. Both Woodard and Torn received Oscar nominations.

WHAT’S EATING GILBERT GRAPE, directed by Lasse Hallstrom (1993)

In one of the many films in which Steenburgen took non-starring roles while raising her children, she plays against type as an unhappily married woman who has an affair with the much younger title character played by Johnny Depp before he finds salvation in the arms of a girl his own age. Although she is good as usual, Steenburgen is outclassed in this one by Depp as the young man trapped by family obligations; by Leonardo DiCaprio in his star-making role as Depp’s mentally challenged brother; by Darlene Cates as the boys’ morbidly obese mother and by Juliette Lewis as the girl in the broken down RV destined to be his true love.

THE HELP, directed by Tate Taylor (2011)

Billed way down in the cast list, Steenburgen plays the New York publisher who gives Emma Stone’s character the job of writing a book of personal accounts from the point of view of southern maids (all anonymous, of course) exposing what it is like to work in the houses of white folks, raising their children and cleaning their toilets. While Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain have the standout roles, the film also benefits from the contributions of such well-known players as Cicely Tyson, Sissy Spacek, Allison Janney and Steenburgen in smaller roles in which they are all given their moment to shine.