Joan Allen

Joan Allen is an American actress born on August 20, 1956, in Rochelle, Illinois. The daughter of Dorothea Marie Allen, a homemaker, and James Jefferson Allen, a gas station owner, she grew up with an older brother, David, and two older sisters, Mary and Lynn. A high school production sparked her interest in performance, and she went on to attend Eastern Illinois University, where she met actor John Malkovich, before transferring to Northern Illinois University, which she attended from 1975 to 1977. Her Broadway career spans 1987 to 2018, and her body of work has earned her a Tony Award, a Theatre World Award, nominations for three Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards.

Allen joined the Steppenwolf Theatre Company ensemble in 1977 at Malkovich's invitation, and the company remained a central part of her stage work for years. Her Steppenwolf productions included Three Sisters, Waiting for the Parade, Love Letters, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, and The Wheel. Her stage work during this period brought early recognition, including the 1984 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play for And a Nightingale Sang, as well as a Theatre World Award that same year.

Allen made her Broadway debut in Burn This, opposite Malkovich, earning the 1988 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She followed that with a role in The Heidi Chronicles, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play that ran at the Plymouth Theatre alongside Boyd Gaines. The production received six Tony Award nominations and won Best Play, and Allen earned her second Tony nomination for her performance in it. After a roughly twenty-year absence from Broadway, she returned in March 2009 to play Katherine Keenan in Michael Jacobs' Impressionism, opposite Jeremy Irons at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. In 2018, Allen appeared in the Broadway premiere of Kenneth Lonergan's The Waverly Gallery at the John Golden Theatre, playing Ellen Fine alongside Elaine May, Lucas Hedges, and Michael Cera.

Allen's film career began with Compromising Positions in 1985, followed by roles in Manhunter, Peggy Sue Got Married, and Tucker: The Man and His Dream, all released between 1986 and 1988. Her screen profile rose considerably in the mid-1990s with a succession of high-profile dramatic performances. She portrayed First Lady Pat Nixon opposite Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone's Nixon in 1995, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. The following year she played Elizabeth Proctor in Nicholas Hytner's film adaptation of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, opposite Daniel Day-Lewis, earning both the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress and a second Academy Award nomination in the same category. In 1997 she starred in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm alongside Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Elijah Wood, Christina Ricci, and Tobey Maguire, and also appeared in Face/Off. Her role in Gary Ross's Pleasantville in 1998, alongside Jeff Daniels, Reese Witherspoon, and Tobey Maguire, brought her a second Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Allen received her third Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Actress, for her leading role in the political drama The Contender in 2000, in which she starred opposite Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman. She was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role for that performance. In 2001, her work in the TNT miniseries The Mists of Avalon earned her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.

Subsequent film work included Searching for Bobby Fischer, The Notebook, The Upside of Anger, and the Bourne franchise, in which she played CIA Deputy Director Pamela Landy across The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, and The Bourne Legacy. She also appeared in Death Race and The Bourne Legacy. In 2015, she won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the film Room. That same year she joined the cast of the ABC drama series The Family, playing a mayor and family matriarch. Outside of film and television, Allen voiced the character Delphine in Bethesda Softworks' 2011 video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and contributed to the Thomas Nelson audio Bible production The Word of Promise.