Marcia Gay Harden Biography

This attractive, dark-haired, stage-trained player of film and TV made her feature debut in “Miller’s Crossing” (1990), Joel and Ethan Coen’s stylish take on the gangster genre. Marcia Gay Harden scored with her sultry, husky-voiced portrayal of Verna whom she described as “a gun-toting, cigarette-smoking, poker-faced moll.”
One of five children born to a US Naval captain and his homemaker wife, Harden spent a peripatetic childhood, in which “I changed my identity all the time”, even pretending to be a boy for a time while living in Japan. Intending to enter diplomatic service, Harden changed her plans while attending college in Greece. After a stint at the University of Maryland, she eventually graduated from the University of Texas where she was directed by Edward Dmytryk in a film school production. After some success in regional theater in Washington, DC, Harden moved to Manhattan and joined the ranks of every other struggling actress, taking waitressing jobs and auditioning without much success. It perhaps didn’t help when a casting agent informed Harden that her “flaring-nostril look” would preclude her from ever being hired. Ignoring the rude comments, Harden enrolled in the graduate program at NYU. She went on to star in the short film “Florence” (1990), director Rebecca Miller’s portrait of an empathetic woman who develops amnesia just like her neighbor. That same year, she made her feature debut as Verna in “Miller’s Crossing”, although it took a while before her career kicked into gear.





