Lois Smith

Lois Arlene Smith, born Lois Arlene Humbert on November 3, 1930, in Topeka, Kansas, is an American actress whose career spans eight decades across theatre, film, and television. The youngest of six children born to Carrie and William Humbert, a telephone company employee, she grew up in a family that relocated to Seattle when she was eleven years old. Her father, who died in 1950 at age 54, was deeply involved in church life and staged plays there in which the young Smith performed. She studied theatre at the University of Washington without completing a degree, and at eighteen married Wesley Dale Smith, whom she had met in college; they divorced in 1970 and had one daughter, Moon Elizabeth Smith. Around 1951, Smith and her husband moved to New York City to pursue professional careers. Following her work with director Elia Kazan on her film debut, he encouraged her to study with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Early in her New York years she was also mentored by playwright and director John Van Druten.

Smith made her Broadway debut in 1952 at age twenty-two in Time Out for Ginger, playing Joan alongside Nancy Malone and Melvyn Douglas. She returned to Broadway in 1955 with The Wisteria Trees, which starred Helen Hayes, and the following year performed with Hayes again in The Glass Menagerie. Also in 1955, she took the lead role of Josephine Perry in Sally Benson's The Young and Beautiful, which ran for sixty-five performances at the Longacre Theatre. In 1957, she originated the role of Carol Cutrere in Tennessee Williams's Orpheus Descending, a production that also featured Maureen Stapleton, and in 1958 she appeared in Edwin Booth, directed by José Ferrer. From 1965 to 1967, Smith worked as a company member with the Theatre of the Living Arts in Philadelphia under Andre Gregory. She is a lifetime member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, founded by Curt Dempster in 1968. In 1973, she returned to Broadway in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh.

Her association with Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago became a defining thread of her stage career. In 1988, she was cast as Ma Joad in the company's production of The Grapes of Wrath, an adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1939 novel, originating the role before the production toured and reached Broadway in 1990. That performance earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Also in 1988, she originated the role of Mrs. Campbell in Horton Foote's The Man Who Climbed the Pecan Trees. Smith became an ensemble member of Steppenwolf in 1993. In 1995, she starred as Halie in a Steppenwolf revival of Sam Shepard's Buried Child, which transferred to Broadway in 1996 and brought her a second Tony nomination in the same category. With Steppenwolf she also starred in the title role of Mother Courage and Her Children in 2001 and as Fanny Cavendish in a revival of The Royal Family in 2002.

Off Broadway, Smith accumulated an equally distinguished record. In 2005, she starred as Carrie Watts in a Signature Theatre Company production of The Trip to Bountiful, for which she received an Obie Award for Best Actress, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Lucille Lortel Award, and a Drama Desk Award. In 2010, she played Vera in Amy Herzog's After the Revolution, earning a Lucille Lortel Award nomination. She originated the role of Mable Murphy in Sam Shepard's Heartless in 2012, and in 2014 she originated the title role of Marjorie Prime, a new play by Jordan Harrison, at the Mark Taper Forum. She appeared in Annie Baker's John at the Signature Theatre Company in 2015, and in 2018 she took the leading role in Lily Thorne's Peace for Mary Frances, directed by Lila Neugebauer and presented by The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Smith was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 2007, and in 2013 received a Lifetime Achievement Obie Award for her Off-Broadway work.

Her Broadway career culminated with a third Tony nomination and, ultimately, a win. In 2019, she appeared in The Inheritance on Broadway, and at the 2020 Tony Awards she won Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for that performance, becoming the oldest performer to win a Tony Award for acting. She also received the 2020 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play for the same role.

Smith's film career began with her 1955 debut in Elia Kazan's East of Eden, alongside James Dean, Julie Harris, and Jo Van Fleet, and she appeared on the cover of Life magazine in November of that year. Her next film was the western Strange Lady in Town, after which she concentrated largely on television before returning to film with The Way We Live Now in 1970. That same year she earned the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Partita Dupea, the sister of Jack Nicholson's character, in Five Easy Pieces. Subsequent film appearances included Resurrection (1980), Fatal Attraction (1987), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Falling Down (1993), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), Dead Man Walking (1995), Twister (1996), Minority Report (2002), The Nice Guys (2016), Lady Bird (2017), and The French Dispatch (2021). In 2017, her leading performance in the science-fiction drama Marjorie Prime brought her nominations for an Independent Spirit Award, a Gotham Award, and a Saturn Award, as well as a Satellite Award win.

On television, Smith was a regular cast member on the HBO horror drama True Blood and received a Critics' Choice Television Award nomination for Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series for her work on The Americans. Beyond performing, she has also taught, directed, and written for the stage.