Janet McTeer

Janet McTeer is an English actress born on 5 August 1961 in Wallsend, North Tyneside, who grew up in York. She attended Queen Anne Grammar School for Girls and worked at the Old Starre Inn, at York Minster, and at York's Theatre Royal before training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After graduating from RADA, she began her professional stage career in 1984 and launched her theatrical work with the Royal Exchange Theatre. Her early stage work earned her an Olivier Award nomination for Best Newcomer for The Grace of Mary Traverse in 1986.

McTeer's screen debut came in the 1986 film Half Moon Street, based on a novel by Paul Theroux. Her early television work included the BBC production Portrait of a Marriage, in which she played Vita Sackville-West, and the 1991 ITV production Catherine Cookson's The Black Velvet Gown alongside Bob Peck and Geraldine Somerville, which won the International Emmy Award for best drama. She appeared in the 1992 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, co-starring Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes, and in the 1995 film Carrington, starring Emma Thompson and Jonathan Pryce, in which she played Vanessa Bell. She also starred in the title role of Lynda La Plante's ITV series The Governor from 1995 to 1996.

Her stage breakthrough came in 1996 when she played Nora Helmer in a West End production of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, earning both the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress and the Critics' Circle Theatre Award. When the production transferred to Broadway in 1997, McTeer received the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play, and a Theatre World Award. During the Broadway run, she was interviewed by Charlie Rose on his PBS talk show, where filmmaker Gavin O'Connor saw her and cast her as the lead in his independently produced film Tumbleweeds. That film became a 1999 Sundance Film Festival favorite, and McTeer's performance earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress along with Academy Award and Screen Actors Guild nominations in the same category.

McTeer's subsequent screen work included Velvet Goldmine in 1998, Songcatcher with Aidan Quinn, Waking the Dead with Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly, the Dogme film The King Is Alive with Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tideland, written and directed by Terry Gilliam. In 2009, she portrayed Clementine Churchill in the HBO film Into the Storm, about Winston Churchill's wartime leadership, earning a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for the role. That same year, she reprised her stage role as Mary, Queen of Scots in Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, when the production transferred to Broadway after a 2005 West End run opposite Harriet Walter as Queen Elizabeth I. The Broadway transfer earned McTeer a Tony Award nomination and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play. She had also appeared in God of Carnage in the West End in 2008 alongside Tamsin Greig, Ken Stott, and Ralph Fiennes at the Gielgud Theatre, and reprised her role in the Broadway production opposite Jeff Daniels from March to June 2010.

In 2011, McTeer starred alongside Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs, playing Hubert Page, a role that brought her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. That same year she appeared with Daniel Radcliffe and Ciarán Hinds in The Woman in Black. She subsequently joined the fifth and final season of the television series Damages, playing Kate Franklin and reuniting with Close, marking her first American television series. In 2013 she was cast as Jacquetta of Luxembourg in the BBC historical drama series The White Queen, based on Philippa Gregory's novel series The Cousins' War, and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for the role. She joined the cast of the BBC spy-thriller miniseries The Honourable Woman, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, in 2013, and in 2015 starred as Commander Kim Guziewicz in the CBS drama Battle Creek. In 2016, she played Petruchio in the New York Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park all-female production of The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, and co-starred with Liev Schreiber in the Broadway production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, playing the Marquise de Merteuil from October 2016 to January 2017. She also played American novelist Mary McCarthy in Margarethe von Trotta's film Hannah Arendt, and filmed The Exception, based on The Kaiser's Last Kiss, in which she portrayed Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz.

In 2018, McTeer played Alisa Jones in the Marvel Television and Netflix production Jessica Jones and began portraying cartel attorney Helen Pierce in the Netflix crime drama Ozark, a role she continued through 2020. That same year she took on the title role of Sarah Bernhardt in Theresa Rebeck's Broadway play Bernhardt/Hamlet, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play in 2019. In early 2023, she appeared at London's National Theatre in Simon Stone's new play Phaedra, alongside a cast that included Assaad Bouab and Mackenzie Davis.

In 2008, McTeer was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her services to drama. Her accolades across stage and screen include a Tony Award, an Olivier Award, a Golden Globe Award, two Drama Desk Awards, two Academy Award nominations, and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. Originally from England, she has maintained an active presence on Broadway from 1997 through 2018, with starring roles in A Doll's House, Mary Stuart, God of Carnage, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and Bernhardt/Hamlet.