Mary McDonnell

Mary McDonnell is an actress who has been nominated for two Oscars(r). She is famous for her portrayals of characters from the past and present screen roles. Mary Eileen McDonnell is a Pennsylvania-born actress. She was the child of Eileen (Mundy), an Irish-American computer consultant, as well as John McDonnell. She was born in Ithaca and then graduated from Fredonia State University of New York. She then attended drama school and then was accepted into the Long Wharf Theatre Company (East Coast). Two decades later, she landed her breakthrough film role in Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves (1990), playing "Stands with a Fist" who is a white woman raised by the Sioux Indians. The actress received her first Academy Award nomination for the role. McDonnell's film credits include Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon (1991) & Mumford (1999) with veteran actors such as Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier and Ben Kingsley; Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day (1996) (starring Will Smith); the acclaimed art house cult-hit Donnie Darko (192001); and Margin Call (2011). It earned her the Robert Altman Awards at the 2012 Independent Spirit Awards. On the smaller screen, McDonnell starred in four seasons of the Syfy Network's award-winning television series Battlestar Galactica (2004) in her critically praised performance as President Laura Roslin. She garnered an Emmy nomination for her regular guest role in the TV series ER (1994). She is the lead character of Captain Sharon Raydor on the TNT's top drama show Major Crimes (2012), the sequel to The Closer (2005), in which McDonnell was the sole actor and was awarded an primetime Emmy(r) nomination. As the soap opera star who is paraplegic in John Sayles's critically acclaimed film Passion Fish (1992), she was awarded a Best Actress Academy Award(r) nomination, as well as a Golden Globe nomination.