Patricia Clarkson

Patricia Clarkson
Clarkson at the 2010 Metropolitan Opera opening night of Das Rheingold
Born	Patricia Davies Clarkson December 29, 1959 (1959-12-29) (age 52) 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]

Woody Allen and Clarkson at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Whatever Works

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 is set to guest 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

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Patricia Clarkson

• Patricia Clarkson at the Internet Movie Database
• Patricia Clarkson at the Internet Broadway Database
• Patricia Clarkson at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Patricia Clarkson at AllRovi
• Patricia Clarkson at Yahoo! Movies
• "Patricia Clarkson, Directors' Stealth Weapon" Michelle Orange, The New York Times, 30 July 2010