Joanne Baron

Joanne Baron is an American actress, producer, and Meisner technique acting coach whose career spans stage, film, and television. Raised in Providence, Rhode Island, she attended Classical and Pawtucket High Schools before receiving early acceptance to the University of Connecticut. She ultimately pursued performance opportunities, and her Broadway credits include Let My People Come. During her early career she also sang at Reno Sweeny's alongside Cissy Houston, the mother of Whitney Houston.

Baron's stage work extends beyond Broadway to include There Once Was a Girl from Pawtucket, a production mounted in Los Angeles that earned two Dramalogue Awards in 1997. Her film appearances include Valley Girl, National Lampoon's Joy of Sex, Real Genius, Universal Soldier, Someone to Watch Over Me, Spider-Man 2, The Prince & Me, Real Genius, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, Drag Me to Hell, and Allie & Me. On television, she has appeared in the Emmy Award-winning series Mad Men, as well as Law & Order, The Shield, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the ABC series Lovers and Other Strangers.

In addition to performing, Baron has worked as a producer. She served as executive producer on the television film Profoundly Normal, starring Kirstie Alley, and as producer on the films Perfume, Brooklyn Babylon, and Allie & Me. Her performance in Allie & Me earned her the Best Actress award at the River Run Film Festival.

Baron has been a dedicated teacher of the Meisner technique since 1975, when she established a studio specializing in that approach to actor training. She studied under William Esper, a prominent Meisner instructor and alumnus of the Neighborhood Playhouse who founded the MFA and BFA Professional Actor Training Programs at Rutgers University. Among her former students are actors Halle Berry, Robin Wright, Mariska Hargitay, Patrick Dempsey, and Leslie Mann, as well as directors Martha Coolidge and Tom Shadyac, and actors Luca Bercovici, Channon Roe, and Haley Webb.

Baron is co-owner and artistic director of the Joanne Baron / D.W. Brown Studio in Santa Monica, California, which she has operated for nearly fifty years alongside her husband, actor, acting coach, and director D.W. Brown. The studio is an offshoot of the William Esper Studio in New York.