Elizabeth Perkins

Elizabeth Perkins is an American actress born on November 18, 1960, whose career has spanned Broadway, film, and television. Her paternal grandparents were Greek immigrants from Thessaloniki who anglicized the family surname from Pisperikos to Perkins upon settling in the United States. Perkins grew up in Colrain, Massachusetts, following her parents' divorce in 1963. Her early exposure to performance came through Arena Civic Theatre, a non-profit community theatre group based in Greenfield, Massachusetts. She went on to attend Northfield Mount Hermon School before studying at the Goodman School of Drama at DePaul University in Chicago from 1978 to 1981, where she earned her Certificate in Acting.

Perkins made her Broadway debut in 1984 in Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs. Following that engagement, she performed with several ensemble companies, among them The New York Shakespeare Festival and the Steppenwolf Theater. Her film career began in 1986 with Edward Zwick's About Last Night, and that same year she was named one of twelve Promising New Actors of 1986 in John Willis' Screen World. She achieved a significant career breakthrough opposite Tom Hanks in Big (1988). Her subsequent film work included Barry Levinson's Avalon, for which she received critical acclaim, and The Doctor (1991), in which she appeared alongside William Hurt, earning further recognition for her portrayal of a terminal cancer patient. She starred as Wilma Flintstone in The Flintstones (1994) and as Dorey Walker in Miracle on 34th Street (1994), appeared in 28 Days (2000) as Sandra Bullock's sister, provided the voice of Coral in Finding Nemo (2003), and played a psychiatrist in The Ring Two (2005).

From 2005 to 2009, Perkins portrayed Celia Hodes, an alcoholic and image-conscious PTA mother, on the Showtime series Weeds alongside Mary-Louise Parker and Justin Kirk. The role earned her three Primetime Emmy nominations for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and two Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress in a TV Series, Miniseries or Made for TV Motion Picture, in 2006 and 2007 respectively. At a Museum of Television and Radio screening of the Weeds season two finale on October 25, 2006, Perkins identified Celia Hodes as her favorite role. She announced on May 6, 2010, that the fifth season of Weeds had been her last. She later starred in the ABC comedy series How to Live with Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life) and played Birdie in the Netflix original series GLOW.

In her personal life, Perkins married actor Terry Kinney in 1984; the marriage ended in divorce in 1988. She has one daughter with Maurice Phillips. In 2000, she married Argentine-born cinematographer Julio Macat and gained three stepsons: Maximillian, Alexander, and Andreas. In 2005, at the age of 44, she was diagnosed with latent autoimmune diabetes, a form of type 1 diabetes typically identified in middle age. In 2017, she participated in a rally against sexual harassment in Los Angeles, holding a sign naming actor James Woods above the hashtag #MeToo.