Felicity Huffman Biography
Often lauded for her stage work, Felicity Huffman won a new round of fans as the smart, competent producer Dana Whitaker on the ABC series “Sports Night” (1998-2000). Although born in Westchester County, New York, she was raised in Colorado. Returning east to attend NYU, Huffman joined the Atlantic Theater Company, co-founded by David Mamet and William H Macy. Mamet offered the actress her first screen role, a bit part in “Things Change” (1988), and she was also tapped as Madonna’s understudy and successor in Mamet’s Broadway play “Speed-the-Plow” (also 1988).
Over the course of the next ten years, Huffman alternated between acclaimed stage roles (most often with the Atlantic Theater Company) and TV roles. She made her small screen debut as a series regular portraying the government security officer who aids an elderly man who seems to be growing younger in “Stephen King’s ‘Golden Years’” (CBS, 1991). Guest roles on series like “Law & Order” and “The X-Files” followed. Huffman was tapped to play Edward Asner’s daughter in the ABC sitcom “Thunder Alley” but was replaced after the pilot. She bounced back from that disappointment with a stage success in Mamet’s “The Cryptogram” (1995) and in a supporting turn in the playwright’s film “The Spanish Prisoner” (1998) before landing “Sports Night,” the Aaron Sorkin-penned sit-com that made her a well-known name.
Her real-life husband Macy, whom she married in 1997, joined the series in its second season, sparking an on-screen partnership that would endure through many projects: they also co-starred in the cable telepic “A Case of Murder” (1999), a comedy-mystery Macy adapted from the Donald Westlake novel; they both appeared in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia” (1999); she had an uncredited turn in Macy’s award-winning TNT telepic “Door To Door,” which he also co-wrote; they reunited in the Showtime mini-series “Out of Order” (2003); and co-starred in the legal potboiler telepic “Reversible Errors” (2004).
After “Sports Night” and away from Macy, Huffman also kept busy solo on the small screen with parts in the telepics “The Heart Department” (2001), “Snap Decision” (2001) and, most impressively, in director John Frankenheimer’s acclaimed HBO drama “The Path to War” (2002), playing First Lady “Lady Bird†Johnson. She also scored a pair of high-profile recurring roles, playing Julia Wilcox, Frasier Crane’s caustic co-worker and eventual love interest on the hit sit-com “Frasier” from 2003-2004, and Charlotte Ellis in the legal drama “The D.A.” After a stint on the big screen as Kate Hudson’s late older sister in the comedy “Raising Helen” (2004), Huffman returned to series drama in the offbeat serial drama “Desperate Housewives” (ABC, 2004 - ), playing Lynette Scavo, a former corporate ladder-climber turned stay-at-home mom who struggles with her insecurities when she can’t control her wild children and gets little support from her husband. The show’s mega-popularity provided Huffman’s career with fresh energy–she scored an Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the series’ debut season, as well as a 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series–though she continued to remain the most private and low-profile of her co-stars.
Later that same year Huffman had an astonishing turn on the big screen in the indie “Transamerica” (2005) playing a pre-operative transsexual who, on the brink of her transforming surgery, discovered that in her youth she had fathered a son, who contacts her as a troubled teen hustler on the run. Despite the gender-bending premise, the film followed a traditional road movie dynamic, and Huffman won widespread praise for her nearly unrecognizable, fully formed performance. All the attention she received resulted in a Golden Globe award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, which almost guaranteed the actress a nomination from the Academy Awards. And she was indeed one of the nominees for Best Actress in a Leading Role when they were announced the morning of January 31, 2006.
- Born:
on 12/09/1962 in Westchester County, New York - Job Titles:
Actor
Family
- Brother: Moore Huffman. older
- Daughter: Georgia Grace Macy. born March 14, 2002; father is William H. Macy
- Daughter: Sophia Macy. born on August 1, 2000
- Mother: Grace Huffman.
Significant Others
- Husband: William H Macy. met through mutual association with the Atlantic Theater Company; married on September 6, 1997
Education
- New York University, New York City, theatre
- Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, England
- American Academy of Dramatic Arts, New York City
- Circle in the Square Professional Theatre School, New York City
Milestones
- 1988 Film acting debut in bit part in “Things Changes”, directed by David Mamet
- 1988 Understudied and eventually replaced Madonna in Mamet’s Broadway play “Speed-the-Plow”
- 1990 Had featured role in “Reversal of Fortune”
- 1991 TV series debut as government security chief Terry Spann in “Stephen King’s ‘Golden Years’” (CBS)
- 1992 TV-movie acting debut in the USA Network’s “Quicksand: No Escape”
- 1993 Received strong notices for her lead performance as a woman converting to Judaism who recalls childhood sexual abuse in the Old Globe (San Diego) production of “Out of Purgatory”
- 1994 Appeared in the pilot episode of the ABC sitcom “Thunder Alley” as Ed Asner’s daughter; replaced in the series by Diane Venora
- 1995 Acted onstage in Mamet’s “The Cryptogram”
- 1995 Directed by Mamet in the Atlantic Theater Company production of J.B. Priestley’s “Dangerous Corner”
- 1996 Was featured in the Showtime series “Bedtime”
- 1997 Directed by future husband William H Macy in “The Joy of Going Somewhere Definite” at the Atlantic Theater Company
- 1998 Portrayed TV producer Dana Whitaker in the ABC series “Sports Night”
- 1998 Co-starred in “The Spanish Prisoner”, written and directed by Mamet
- 1999 Acted opposite husband William H Macy (who also co-wrote the teleplay) in the TNT original “A Slight Case of Murder”
- 1999 Played small role in “Magnolia” as a TV game show coordinator; husband had more substantial role in the film
- 2001 Cast opposite Tony Shalhoub in the CBS pilot “Heart Department”
- 2001 Portrayed a photographer who is charged with child pornography when she takes pictures of her friend’s children in the Lifetime movie “Snap Decision”
- 2002 Portrayed Lady Bird Johnson in the made for TV movie “Path to War”
- 2003 Guest starred as Frasier’s Love interest on the NBC comedy “Frasier”
- 2003 Starred opposite Eric Stoltz in the Showtime series “Out of Order”
- 2004 Cast as Lynette Scavo, the ex-career woman and mother of four unmanageable kids in the ABC drama “Desperate Housewives”; received Golden Globe (2004, 2005) and SAG (2006) nominations for Best Actress in a Comedy Series
- 2004 Starred in the CBS miniseries opposite her real life husband William H. Macy in Scott Turow’s crime thriller “Reversible Errors,” which also stars Tom Selleck and Monica Potter
- 2005 Played a transsexual woman who discovers that she fathered a child in her former life as a man in the indie drama “Transamerica”; earned Oscar and SAG nominations for Best Actress
- Became a member of the Atlantic Theater Company, co-founded by David Mamet and William H Macy
- Raised in Colorado
- Will co-star with Lindsay Lohan and Jane Fonda in “Georgia Rule”
Kristen Bell Biography
For some actors, success just seems to come naturally. In the case of talented stage and screen beauty Kristen Bell, it wasn’t so much a matter of if she was going to be a star after realizing her dream during an early performance as a banana in Raggedy Ann and Andy at the tender age of 12 — but when she would finally make the big time. Paralyzed with stage fright as she waited for her cue off-stage, Bell was offered a word of encouragement by her supportive mother that would ultimately give her the drive to realize her life’s calling. A native of Detroit whose early stage experiences eventually led her to study at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Bell saw her early dreams of on-stage success begin to come true when she was chosen to portray Becky Thatcher in a Broadway production of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer shortly after arriving in the Big Apple.
Realizing that she had what it took to find success onscreen as well as on-stage, Bell was soon packing her bags for Los Angeles and landing small supporting roles in such features as Polish Wedding and Pootie Tang. She returned briefly to Broadway for a role in the 2002 revival of The Crucible, playing alongside well-known stage and screen actors Liam Neeson and Laura Linney. In 2003, Bell impressed television viewers with a solid performance in the made-for-television drama The King and Queen of Moonlight Bay before moving on to essay the unforgettable role of a young girl struggling to raise her three stepbrothers after their drug-addicted mother is sent to jail in Gracie’s Choice. If television had offered Bell her most successful roles to this point in her career, the magnetic young screen presence still had feature aspirations, as evidenced by her involvement in David Mamet’s 2004 thriller Spartan. Of course, Bell wasn’t about to turn her back on the small screen just yet, and following appearances on such popular series as Everwood and Deadwood, she took the lead as a sort-of new-millennium Nancy Drew on UPN’s Veronica Mars. If that, combined with a lively performance in the Showtime musical spoof Reefer Madness, wasn’t enough to make young Bell a household name, subsequent performances in the college comedy Fifty Pills and the thriller Deepwater would at least serve to expand her feature-film resumé. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
* Born:
on 07/18/80 in Detroit, Michigan
* Job Titles:
Actor
Education
* New York University, New York, musical theatre
Milestones
* 2001 Cast in the Off-Broadway stage musical “Reefer Madness”
* 2001 Made her Broadway debut originating the role of Becky Thatcher in the short lived “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”
* 2002 Appeared on Broadway as part of the original cast of “The Crucible” starring Laura Linney and Liam Neeson
* 2002 Moved to Los Angeles
* 2003 Television debut in the season premiere of “The Shield” playing a gang member’s girlfriend
* 2004 Cast as the title character on UPN’s “Veronica Mars”
* 2005 Will reprise her role in the film version of “Reefer Madness” (Showtime)