Mary Steenburgen: A Brief Biography

Mary Steenburgen-yes, the famous Arkansan actress-was born February 8, 1953, in Newport, Arkansas, to a freight train conductor and a school secretary. Well her father’s job caused them to move to Northern Little Rock, and her mother enrolled her in dance lessons, which gave Mary Steenburgen just the right push towards a long career of acting. Her first performance was for veterans that had been hospitalized, but she never appeared on stage until her senior year, in which she played the role of Emily in Our Town. And she wrote and directed her first play for her church group. (Mary Nell Steenburgen.) After she graduated, she enrolled in Hendrix College in Conway. And if it weren’t for her drama teacher who encouraged her dreams, she wouldn’t have auditioned and won a slot in Sanford Meisner’s Neighborhood Playhouse. Which caused her to move to New York at a young age and become a waitress/actress in training. And just a little while after that, she founded an improvisational comedy group called the Cracked Tokens, which began performing regularly at the
After being singled out in the waiting room and given a script, she ended up winning the part of Julia Tate. Soon after, she starred in another movie, Time After Time, and met her future husband Malcolm McDowell. Which was a short-lived marriage, but her only children Lilly and Charlie McDowell came from it. Much to her surprise, she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1980 for her performance in Melvin and Howard. (Mary Steenburgen Biography). After performing in many movies afterward, her father died while she was shooting Parenthood in 1989, and just months later she divorced Malcolm. (Mary Nell Steenburgen). And then six years later she married Ted Danson. (Mary Nell Steenburgen). And to this day she has maintained her ties with Arkansas, and is still married-hopefully happily- to