Marcia Gay Harden
Marcia Gay Harden (born August 14, 1959)[1] is an American actress. Her breakthrough came in the 1990 Coen brothers' film Miller's Crossing. For her portrayal of artist Lee Krasner in the 2000 biographical film Pollock, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She received a second Academy Award nomination for her performance as a troubled wife in the drama film Mystic River (2003). Her other notable film credits include The First Wives Club (1996), Flubber (1997), Space Cowboys (2000), Mona Lisa Smile (2003), and the Fifty Shades film series (2015–2018).
Marcia Gay Harden
August 14, 1959
Actress
1979–present
3
Harden made her Broadway debut in 1993, starring in Tony Kushner's epic play Angels in America: Millennium Approaches/Angels in America: Perestroika for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. She returned to Broadway in 2009 in Yazmina Reza's comedic play God of Carnage, with her performance earning her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.
Harden's television credits include guest roles in the HBO series The Newsroom (2013–2014), the ABC series How to Get Away with Murder (2015–2020) and the Apple TV+ series The Morning Show (2019–present), as well as main roles in the CBS series Code Black (2015–2018) and So Help Me Todd (2022–present). She received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her guest role in the crime drama series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and her supporting role in the television film The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009).
Early life[edit]
Harden was born in the La Jolla area of San Diego, California, the daughter of Texas natives Beverly Harden (née Bushfield), a housewife, and Thad Harold Harden (1932–2002), who was a Captain and fighter pilot who served 30 years in the United States Navy.[2] She has three sisters and one brother.[3]
Harden's brother is named Thaddeus, as are her father and her former husband. Harden's family frequently moved because of her father's job, living in Japan, Germany, Greece, California, and Maryland.[4]
Harden graduated from Surrattsville High School in Clinton, Maryland in 1976. She received a Bachelor of Arts in theater from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980. Harden received a Master of Fine Arts from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1988.[5]
Personal life[edit]
In 1996, Harden married Thaddaeus Scheel, a prop master, with whom she worked on The Spitfire Grill.[6] They have three children.[10][11][12] In February 2012, Harden filed for divorce from Scheel.[13]
Harden owned property in the Catskills and a townhouse in Harlem.[14][15][16] She sold the Harlem townhouse in 2012.[17]
Harden is an avid potter, which she learned in high school, and then took up again while acting in Angels in America.[18][14] She is also a practitioner of ikebana, the art of Japanese flower arrangement, which her mother learned while they lived in Japan.[19] She gave a brief demonstration in 2007 on The Martha Stewart Show and presented some works of her family, as well.[20]
In May 2018, a memoir called The Seasons of My Mother: A Memoir of Love, Family, and Flowers was published. The book details the story and bond of mother and daughter throughout time and how they are dealing with the largest struggle yet, her mother's Alzheimer's disease. Harden created works of ikebana specifically for this book to illustrate the different seasons of her mother's life.[21][18]
