Frances McDormand Biography
An intelligent, versatile character actress who virtually disappears into each role, Frances McDormand earned a Best Actress Academy Award as Marge Gunderson, the pregnant deputy sheriff of the Coen brothers’ “Fargo” (1996), her third film with husband Joel and brother-in-law Ethan. After graduating from Yale Drama School, McDormand hit NYC, appearing in several plays, notably “Painting Churches” and “Awake and Sing!” (both 1984). She also entered features as the dim, violent tart whose cuckold husband hires a hit man to kill her and her lover in “Blood Simple” (1984), the debut film of the Coen brothers. She then appeared as a nun in Sam Raimi’s “Crimewave” (1985), a slapstick crime comedy co-written by the Coens and Raimi, and reunited with the former pair to play a shrill, swinging Southern wife who offers Holly Hunter child-rearing advice in their broad-as-a-barn kidnapping comedy “Raising Arizona” (1987).