Ellen McLaughlin

Ellen McLaughlin, born November 9, 1957, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is an American actress and playwright. The daughter of history professor Charles Capan McLaughlin and English professor and novelist Ann Landis, she earned her BA from Yale University in 1980.

McLaughlin is best known in acting circles for originating the role of the Angel in Tony Kushner's Angels in America, a part she held through every U.S. production from the earliest workshops to the Broadway run. Her Broadway credits include both Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Angels in America: Perestroika, both in 1993. Her screen work includes the films Everything Relative and The Bed You Sleep In, directed by Jon Jost, as well as guest appearances on Law & Order. In 2023, she took on the role of King Lear at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in Boulder, Colorado.

As a playwright, McLaughlin began adapting Greek plays in 1992, starting with Sophocles' Electra. Her process involves reading as many existing English translations as possible before writing her own version, retaining each play's basic structure while taking selective liberties. Her adaptations include Electra, The Trojan Women, Helen, The Persians, Oedipus, and The Oresteia, along with original works such as Septimus and Clarissa and Ajax in Iraq. Her collected Greek adaptations were published by T.C.G. under the title The Greek Plays.

McLaughlin has taught playwriting at institutions including Yale School of Drama and Princeton University, and has been a member of the faculty at Barnard College since 1995. She is a member of New Dramatists and has served on the board of Theatre Communications Group. Her writing has been recognized with numerous honors, including the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Great American Play Contest, the Writer's Award from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, the Berilla Kerr Award for Playwriting, and an NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Grant.