Glenne Headly

Glenne Aimee Headly (March 13, 1955 – June 8, 2017) was an American actress born in New London, Connecticut, who built a career spanning stage, film, and television over more than three decades. Her early years were divided between San Francisco, where she lived with her mother, Joan Ida Headly, and Lansford, Pennsylvania, where she was raised at times by her maternal grandmother. Her father, Peter De Normandy Headly, was born on May 13, 1933, and died on August 21, 1969. The family eventually settled in Greenwich Village, where Headly attended public schools including PS 41, a school that placed her in a class for intellectually gifted children. She studied ballet at the Robert Joffrey school and modern dance at the Martha Graham Studios, and later attended the High School of Performing Arts, graduating with honors with a major in drama. She subsequently earned a bachelor's degree from the American College of Switzerland in Leysin before returning to New York, where she worked as a waitress during the day and performed in theater at night.

Headly later relocated to Chicago, where she joined the New Works Ensemble at the St. Nicholas Theatre and was cast in a Goodman Theatre production of Curse of the Starving Class, directed by Robert Falls and co-starring John Malkovich. That production led to her joining the Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble, of which she remained a member from 1979 until 2005. During her time in Chicago, she was nominated for five Joseph Jefferson Awards and won three for best supporting actress. She received her Actors' Equity card after being cast by Vivian Matalon in a summer theatre production of Charley's Aunt, and joined SAG when Arthur Penn wrote a role for her in the film Four Friends. On August 2, 1982, she married Malkovich, a fellow Steppenwolf ensemble member.

Her New York stage career advanced when she replaced Ellen Barkin in Extremities off-Broadway and was subsequently cast in The Philanthropist at the Manhattan Theater Club in 1983. That role earned her a Theatre World Award for best newcomer in 1984. The following year, she appeared on Broadway for the first time, starring as Raina in George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man alongside Kevin Kline and Raul Julia, directed by Malkovich. In 1984, she had also appeared in Lanford Wilson's Balm in Gilead, presented by the Circle Repertory Company and the Steppenwolf Theater Ensemble. Headly's Broadway career extended from 1985 to 2015, and included an appearance in Fish in the Dark.

After her Chicago stage work in the late 1980s, Headly stepped away from theater for approximately ten years. She returned to the stage in 1999, starring with Miranda Richardson in Wallace Shawn's Aunt Dan and Lemon, which premiered at the Almeida Theatre in London. Subsequent stage work included the premiere of My Brilliant Divorce at the Druid Theatre in Galway in 2001, a production of The Guys with David Hyde Pierce at the Actors' Gang in Los Angeles in 2003, and The Jacksonian at the Geffen Playhouse in 2012, in which she played Eva White in the Beth Henley–written production. In 2016, she returned to the Geffen Playhouse to star in Sarah Ruhl's Stage Kiss.

Her film career gained significant momentum with her role in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), opposite Steve Martin and Michael Caine, for which the Chicago Film Critics Association named her Most Promising New Actress. That same year, she divorced Malkovich. Warren Beatty subsequently cast her as Tess Trueheart in Dick Tracy (1990), and she went on to appear in Mortal Thoughts with Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, directed by Alan Rudolph. Additional film credits include Mr. Holland's Opus (1995), Getting Even with Dad (1994) with Ted Danson and Macaulay Culkin, Sgt. Bilko, 2 Days in the Valley, Breakfast of Champions, Around the Bend, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004), The Namesake (2006), Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008), Don Jon (2013), and Strange Weather (2016). During filming of Ordinary Magic in 1992, she met Byron McCulloch, whom she married in 1993.

On television, Headly received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for best supporting actress in a television movie — the first for her role as Elmira Boot Johnson in the 1989 miniseries Lonesome Dove, and the second for Bastard Out of Carolina (1996). She held recurring roles as Dr. Abby Keaton on ER from 1996 to 1997 and as Karen Stottlemeyer on Monk, and appeared in the series Encore! Encore! from 1998 to 1999. In 2001, she appeared in the CBS live telecast of On Golden Pond alongside Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. She also appeared in the HBO limited series The Night Of (2016). Her final projects included the films The Circle and Just Getting Started, both released in 2017, and the Hulu comedy series Future Man, produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, in which she starred alongside Josh Hutcherson and Ed Begley Jr.

Headly died on June 8, 2017, of complications from a pulmonary embolism in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 62, while midway through filming Future Man. She had completed five of the planned thirteen episodes at the time of her death. Over the course of her career, she received a Theatre World Award and four Joseph Jefferson Awards.