Amanda Plummer

Amanda Michael Plummer was born on March 23, 1957, in New York City, the only child of American actress Tammy Grimes and Canadian actor Christopher Plummer. Her parents named her after Amanda Prynne, a character from the play Private Lives, and the actress Michael Learned. She attended Trinity School and later the United Nations International School, where she graduated. After spending two and a half years at Middlebury College, she trained as an actor at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City.

Plummer made her Broadway debut in 1981, playing Jo in a revival of A Taste of Honey alongside Valerie French, who portrayed Jo's mother Helen. The production ran for nearly a year and earned Plummer a Theatre World Award, a Drama Desk nomination, and a Tony Award nomination for Featured Actress in a Play. Her next major Broadway role brought her even greater recognition: her portrayal of Agnes in Agnes of God, opposite Geraldine Page and Elizabeth Ashley, earned her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play, both in 1982, along with the Outer Critics Circle and Boston Critics Circle Awards. In 1983, she took on the role of Laura Wingfield in a Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie. She later played Dolly Clandon in a 1986 production of You Never Can Tell, and in 1987 portrayed Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion alongside Peter O'Toole and Osmund Bullock, a performance that earned her a third Tony Award nomination, this time for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.

Beyond Broadway, Plummer built a substantial career in film and television. Her early film appearances included Cattle Annie and Little Britches and The World According to Garp, both in 1981 and 1982 respectively, followed by Daniel in 1983 and The Hotel New Hampshire in 1984. She appeared in Joe Versus the Volcano in 1990 and The Fisher King in 1991, the latter earning her a BAFTA film nomination, a Chicago Film Critics Association Award nomination, and a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award in 1992. Her role in Pulp Fiction in 1994 brought further attention and an American Comedy Award nomination. She played Nettie in Needful Things in 1993, a performance that earned her a Saturn Award. In 2013, she appeared as Wiress, a former tribute and Hunger Games victor, in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the film adaptation of the second novel in Suzanne Collins's trilogy.

On television, Plummer won an Emmy Award in 1996 for her guest appearance in the Outer Limits episode "A Stitch in Time." She received a Golden Globe nomination and a second Emmy Award for her performance as a Holocaust survivor in the Hallmark film Miss Rose White, which also brought her the Anti-Defamation League Award. A third Emmy followed in 2005 for her portrayal of Miranda Cole, a woman with schizophrenia, in the Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Weak." She also received a Cable Ace Award for her work in The Right to Remain Silent in 1996 and a Cable Ace Award nomination for Last Light in 1993. In 2020, she appeared in the Netflix drama series Ratched, and in 2023 she played Vadic, the primary antagonist of the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard.

Plummer's stage work extended well beyond Broadway. Her off-Broadway credits include Beth in Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind and a role in Tracy Letts's Killer Joe. She performed in numerous Tennessee Williams productions, among them Summer and Smoke, The Gnädiges Fräulein, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, and the world premiere of The One Exception. In 2013, she starred alongside Brad Dourif in an off-Broadway revival of Williams's The Two-Character Play at New World Stages. She also received the Hollywood Drama Critics Award for her performance in the title female role in Romeo and Juliet. In her personal life, Plummer dated screenwriter and director Paul Chart in the late 1990s; the two lived together in Los Angeles and collaborated on his film American Perfekt.