Frances McDormand
Frances Louise McDormand (born Cynthia Ann Smith; June 23, 1957) is an American actress and producer. In a career spanning over four decades, she has gained acclaim for her roles in small-budget independent films. McDormand has received numerous accolades, including four Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and one Tony Award, making her one of the few performers to achieve the "Triple Crown of Acting". Additionally, she has received three BAFTAs and two Golden Globe Awards.[1][2][3] McDormand's worldwide box office gross exceeds $2.2 billion.[4]
Frances McDormand
- Actress
- producer
1982–present
1
McDormand was educated at Bethany College and Yale University. She has been married to Joel Coen of the Coen brothers since 1984. She has appeared in a number of their films, including Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), Burn After Reading (2008), and Hail, Caesar! (2016). McDormand won three Academy Awards for Best Actress for playing a pregnant police chief in Fargo (1996), a grieving mother seeking vengeance in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and a widowed nomad in Nomadland (2020). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her roles in Mississippi Burning (1988), Almost Famous (2000), and North Country (2005). McDormand is the second woman to win Best Actress three times, and the seventh performer to win three acting Oscars.[a]
On television, McDormand produced and starred as the titular protagonist in the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge (2014), which won her the Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie and Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series.[7] On stage, McDormand made her Broadway debut in a revival of Awake and Sing! (1984). She went on to win the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role as a troubled single mother in Good People (2011).[8] She was previously nominated for the 1988 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire.[9]
Early life[edit]
McDormand was born Cynthia Ann Smith on June 23, 1957, in Gibson City, Illinois.[10][11] She was adopted at one and a half years of age by Noreen (Nickelson) and Vernon McDormand and renamed Frances Louise McDormand.[11] Her adoptive mother was a nurse and receptionist while her adoptive father was a Disciples of Christ pastor; both were originally from Canada.[12] McDormand has said that her biological mother—whom she has proudly described, along with herself, as "white trash"—may have been one of the parishioners at Vernon's church.[11][12] She has a sister, Dorothy A. "Dot" McDormand, who is an ordained Disciples of Christ minister and chaplain,[13] as well as a brother, Kenneth, both of whom also were adopted by the McDormands, who had no biological children.
Because McDormand's father specialized in restoring congregations,[12] he frequently moved their family, and they lived in several small towns in Illinois, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee,[14] before settling in Monessen, Pennsylvania, where McDormand graduated from Monessen High School in 1975. She attended Bethany College in West Virginia, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in theater in 1979. In 1982, she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama. She was a roommate of actress Holly Hunter while living in New York City.[15]
Career[edit]
1980s: Early work and breakthrough[edit]
McDormand's first professional acting role was in Derek Walcott's play In a Fine Castle also known as The Last Carnival, which was funded by the MacArthur Foundation and performed in Trinidad. In 1984, she made her film debut in Blood Simple, the first film by her husband Joel Coen and brother-in-law Ethan Coen. In 1985, McDormand appeared in Sam Raimi's Crimewave, as well as an episode of Hunter. In 1987, she appeared as eccentric friend Dot in Raising Arizona, starring Holly Hunter and Nicolas Cage. In addition to her early film roles, McDormand played Connie Chapman in the fifth season of the television police drama Hill Street Blues, and appeared in a 1986 episode of The Twilight Zone. In 1988, she played Stella Kowalski in a stage production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.[9] McDormand is an associate member of the experimental theater company The Wooster Group. In 2002, "the game and talented" McDormand performed as Oenone in the Wooster Group's production of an "exhilarating dissection" of Racine's tragedy Phèdre entitled To You, the Birdie!, at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York.[16]
After appearing in several theatrical and television roles during the 1980s, McDormand gradually gained renown and critical acclaim for her dramatic work in film.[17] In 1989, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Mississippi Burning (1988).[18] Cast alongside Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, McDormand was singled out for praise, with Sheila Benson in her review for the Los Angeles Times writing, "Hackman's mastery reaches a peak here, but McDormand soars right with him. And since she is the film's sole voice of morality, it's right that she is so memorable."[19]
Reception and acting style[edit]
Throughout her career spanning over four decades, McDormand has appeared in a wide variety of projects on the screen and stage, portraying various characters for which she has frequently received critical acclaim.[52][11][53] Vogue remarked that she is "long considered one of our greatest living performers" and that "she grounds every performance with an innate truthfulness. McDormand makes you believe every person she plays is a flesh-and-blood human who continues living out their life once the cameras stop rolling."[54] In his review of Laurel Canyon (2002), film critic Roger Ebert wrote "In almost all of her roles, McDormand embodies an immediate, present, physical, functioning, living, breathing person as well as any actor ever has, and she plays radically different roles as easily as she walks... How she does it is a mystery, but she does, reinventing herself, role after role. McDormand is ascendant."[55] In his review of Nomadland (2020), film critic Leonard Maltin refers to McDormand as "one of the finest actresses on the planet," stating "because [Fern] is played by McDormand, there is no better way to establish a connection between her and us in the audience. We know she is genuine; there is no artifice here."[56]
McDormand has received numerous accolades, including three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, and one Tony Award. She has received three Academy Awards for Best Actress for her performances in Fargo (1996), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and Nomadland (2020). For producing the latter, she was also awarded the Academy Award for Best Picture, making her the first person in history to win Academy Awards both as producer and performer for the same film.[5]
She has received eight Academy Award nominations total (six for acting, two for producing), for the following films:
McDormand's most acclaimed films, according to the review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, include:[59]