Amy Madigan

Amy Marie Madigan, born September 11, 1950, in Chicago, Illinois, is an American actress whose career spans stage, film, and television. Her accolades include an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, an Actor Award, and a Critics' Choice Award, along with a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. She is Catholic and third-generation Irish American. Her father, John J. Madigan (1918–2012), was a journalist who wrote for Newsweek and offered political commentary on programs including Meet the Press and Face the Nation, interviewing figures ranging from Richard Nixon to Martin Luther King Jr. and hosting his own program on WBBM (AM). Her mother, Dolores (née Hanlon; 1921–1992), worked as an administrative assistant and performed in community theatre. Madigan has two brothers, Jack and Jim.

Madigan participated in school plays during high school before attending Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1972. She relocated to Los Angeles in 1974 and later trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. Prior to her acting career, she worked as a singer before transitioning to performance. Her first television appearance was the role of Adele in a 1981 episode of Hart to Hart, followed by a part in the television film Crazy Times.

Her film debut came in 1982 with the drama Love Child, in which she played Terry Jean Moore, earning her a Golden Globe Award nomination for New Star of the Year. In 1983 she starred as Alison Ransom in the television film The Day After. The following year she appeared in Streets of Fire as McCoy and in Places in the Heart as Viola Kelsey. In 1985 she starred in The Laundromat, a television film written by Marsha Norman opposite Carol Burnett, winning a CableACE Award for her performance as Deedee Johnson. That same year she co-starred with her husband, actor Ed Harris, in Alamo Bay, directed by Louis Malle, playing Glory Scheer. Also in 1985, her portrayal of Sunny Mackenzie-Sobel in Twice in a Lifetime, a woman in a difficult marriage, earned her nominations for both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe Award.

Madigan made her Off-Broadway debut in 1987 in The Lucky Spot, written by Beth Henley, playing Sue Jack Tiller. The role earned her a Theatre World Award and a nomination for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play. In 1988 she performed in A Lie of the Mind at the Mark Taper Forum and received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Female for The Prince of Pennsylvania. In 1989 she appeared in two widely seen films: Field of Dreams, playing the wife of Kevin Costner's lead character in a film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Uncle Buck, a John Hughes production in which she played Chanice Kobolowski opposite John Candy. That same year, her portrayal of attorney Sarah Weddington in the television film Roe vs. Wade won her the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film and brought a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie.

In 1990, Madigan starred opposite Paula Kelly in Stevie Wants to Play the Blues by Eduardo Machado, winning a Drama-Logue Award for the performance. The following year she appeared opposite Olympia Dukakis in the Emmy-nominated television film Lucky Day. Madigan made her Broadway debut in 1992 in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire, playing Stella Kowalski opposite Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin. The role brought a nomination for the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Debut Performance. In 1993 she appeared in The Dark Half, a film adaptation of the Stephen King novel directed by George A. Romero, opposite Timothy Hutton.

In 1996 Madigan and Harris produced and starred together in the television film Riders of the Purple Sage, and she starred alongside Tilda Swinton in Female Perversions. A 1997 Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Female followed for her work in Loved. In 2000 she portrayed Peggy Guggenheim in Pollock, a film starring, directed, and produced by Harris. In 2002 she played Reggie Fluty, the officer who responded to the dying Matthew Shepard, in the television film The Laramie Project. From 2003 to 2005 she appeared in the HBO series Carnivàle as Iris Crowe/Irina, sister of the villain Justin Crowe. Her other television credits from this period include a supporting role as Patricia Carver in the Emmy-winning television film The Path to 9/11 (2006) and the role of Dr. Katharine Wyatt on multiple episodes of Grey's Anatomy in 2008. She also guest-starred on Saving Grace as Gretchen Lagardi. In 2007 she played Beatrice "Bea" McCready in Gone Baby Gone, directed by Ben Affleck.

In 2015 Madigan directed a stage production of Off the King's Road at the Odyssey Theater in Los Angeles. In 2016 she starred as Halie in a revival of Sam Shepard's Buried Child for The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center in Manhattan, a production that subsequently transferred to Trafalgar Studios in London in November 2016, where she reprised the role. Her later film work includes a supporting role in American Woman (2018) opposite Sienna Miller, a supporting role as a school principal in Scott Cooper's horror film Antlers (2021), and the lead role of Judge Motley in the independent drama Bull Street (2024), which opened the Sarasota Film Festival. Her performance in the 2025 film Weapons brought her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, completing a span of forty years between her first Oscar nomination for Twice in a Lifetime and her win — the longest such gap between two nominations for an actress.