Amanda Plummer

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Amanda Plummer

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Biography

The daughter of Canadian actor Christopher Plummer and American stage actress Tammy Grimes, Amanda Plummer grew up on the East Coast with a love of horseback riding and literature. After studying at Middlebury College and the Neighborhood Playhouse, she settled into an acting company in Massachusetts. Plummer made her film debut in the 1981 Western Cattle Annie and Little Britches opposite Burt Lancaster. Working on Broadway, she won the Tony and the Drama Desk award for her performance as Agnes in the 1982 stage production of Agnes of God. She lost the role in the film version to Meg Tilly and stayed in the theater. Some of her stage credits include The Glass Menagerie, You Never Can Tell, and A Taste of Honey. She earned another Tony nomination for her performance in Pygmalion, opposite Peter O'Toole. On television, she earned an Emmy nomination for her recurring role of mentally challenged Alice on L.A. Law.

Plummer's feature film work would consist of playing small, fragile, almost invisible characters who nevertheless leave a big impression. On the big screen, Plummer displayed her silent intensity in the non-speaking role of Ellen James in The World According to Garp (1982). She also created the interesting, if little-seen, character of Dagmar in John Patrick Shanley's Joe Versus the Volcano (1990). Her big film breakthrough came about in 1991 in Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King. She played awkward and plain office worker Lydia Sinclair, who inspires the love of a homeless man played by Robin Williams. The next year, she earned her first Emmy award for her role of concentration camp survivor Lusia Weiss in the post-war drama Miss Rose White (1992), a made-for-TV adaptation of an off-Broadway play. In feature films during the late '90s, Plummer often played slightly off-kilter women just on the verge of violent behavior. She was a disturbed sister in So I Married an Axe Murderer and an semi-balanced Castle Rock resident in Needful Things (both 1993). In 1994, she played a partner-in-crime with Tim Roth in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. As the gun-pointing Honey Bunny, Plummer gained a lot of exposure with a minimum of screen time. The next year, she played a serial killer in Michael Winterbottom's Butterfly Kiss (1995).

Returning to television, Plummer earned another Emmy for the role of Professor Theresa Given in a 1996 episode of Showtime's The Outer Limits. For the rest of the '90s, she continued portraying delicately damaged characters in small independent films like Matthew Bright's Freeway (1996) and Peter Cohn's Drunks (1997). She also appeared in the family film A Simple Wish (1997) and lent her voice to the TV series Stories From My Childhood as well as the animated feature Hercules (1997). In 1999, Plummer revisited her earlier days as a horseback rider to play a member of the title harem in Peter Greenaway's bizarre 8 1/2 Women (1999). In 2003, she played Sarah Polley's food-obsessed co-worker in My Life Without Me. Plummer's projects for 2004 included the horror film Satan's Little Helper and Tobe Hooper's Brew. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
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Amanda Plummer
Born Amanda Michael Plummer
(1957-03-23) March 23, 1957 (age 55)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Nationality American
Education Middlebury College
Alma mater Neighborhood Playhouse
Occupation Actress
Years active 1979–present
Parents Christopher Plummer (father)
Tammy Grimes (mother)

Amanda Michael Plummer (born March 23, 1957) is a Tony and Emmy-winning American actress best known for her work on stage and for her roles in films such as The Fisher King (1991) and Pulp Fiction (1994).

Contents

Life and career

Plummer was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of actors Tammy Grimes and Christopher Plummer.[1] She attended the United Nations International School, Middlebury College in Vermont and acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. Early in life, her interest was in riding and tending to horses on the East Coast and in Ireland.[2]

Plummer began appearing in small to mid size roles in television and films in the early 1980s. Her first movie wasCattle Annie and Little Britches (1981), followed by The World According to Garp (1982), Daniel (1983), and The Hotel New Hampshire (1984). However, Plummer's major first successes came from her stage work. She made her Broadway debut as Josephine in the 1981 revival of A Taste of Honey. She won a Tony Award nomination and Theatre World Award for her portrayal. The following year, she won a Tony Award for Featured Actress and a Drama Desk Award for her portrayal of Sister Agnes in the play Agnes of God.[3] In 1983 she portrayed Laura Wingfield opposite Jessica Tandy's Amanda Wingfield in the Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie. Her other Broadway performances include Dolly Clandon in You Never Can Tell (1986) and Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion (1987), for the latter of which she received a third Tony Award nomination.[citation needed]

Following her successes on the stage, she began appearing on television and in feature films. She appeared on L.A. Law as Alice Hackett, a developmentally disabled girlfriend of Benny Stulwitz (played by Larry Drake), for which she received an Emmy Award nomination. In 1996 she won an Emmy for her guest appearance on the episode "Stitch in Time" of the Outer Limits,[4] In 2005, she also won an Emmy for her role as Miranda Cole in the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode Weak, in which she played a schizophrenic. Two other well-known roles were Yolanda (a.k.a. "Honey Bunny") in Pulp Fiction and Rose in So I Married An Axe Murderer. In 1988, she played an eccentric school teacher in Gryphon, an especially memorable episode of the PBS series WonderWorks.

Work

Filmography

Stage

Television

Radio

  • CBS Radio Mystery Theater May 1, 1981 episode 1192 "The Voices"
  • CBS Radio Mystery Theater October 29, 1981 episode 1255 "In Touch"

References

  1. ^ Allmovie profile
  2. ^ The San Diego Union-Tribune, Anne Marie Welsh, p. E-1, May 30, 2003
  3. ^ Tony Award listing
  4. ^ The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present. Ballantine Books. 2003. pp. 1447. ISBN 0-345-45542-8. 

External links


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Copyrights:

Mentioned in

Gryphon (1988 Children's/Family Film)
Prisoners of Inertia (1989 Adventure Film)
October 22 (1999 Thriller Film)
The Gray In Between (2002 Film)
American Perfekt (1997 Drama Film)