Maggie Baird

Maggie May Baird, born on March 29, 1959, in Fruita, Colorado, is an American actress, singer-songwriter, and activist. She learned piano and guitar as a teenager and graduated from Fruita Monument High School in 1977. Her older brother is politician Brian Baird. Baird went on to study theater and dance at the University of Utah before relocating to New York City to pursue a performance career.

Baird's television work began in 1981 with a supporting role in the soap opera Another World. In New York, she appeared in the 1985 Broadway revival of The Iceman Cometh alongside several Off-Broadway productions. She played Taylor Baldwin on the daytime drama As the World Turns in 1987, and in 1990 spent nine months on a touring production of The Heidi Chronicles, in which she portrayed one of Heidi's friends. Her Broadway activity spanned the years 1985 to 1990. Baird made her film debut in 1989, playing Stacy in An Innocent Man.

In 1984, while performing in a play in Anchorage, Alaska, Baird met actor Patrick O'Connell. She relocated to Los Angeles in 1991, where she took on television roles in productions including L.A. Law, Murphy Brown, Walker, Texas Ranger, and Picket Fences. From 1994 to 2000, Baird was a member and teacher at the Groundlings, an improvisational and sketch comedy school in Los Angeles, where she worked alongside Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, and Melissa McCarthy, serving as McCarthy's first improv teacher.

Among her notable television roles from the 2000s and 2010s are Sharon Pearl in The X-Files in 2000, Andrea Kuhn in Six Feet Under in 2005, and Sandra Hicks in Bones in 2009. Baird also built a substantial voice acting career, providing the voice of the asari character Samara across the original Mass Effect trilogy and contributing voices to the Saints Row series, the EverQuest II series, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, Rogue Galaxy, and Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption. In March 2009, she released her debut studio album, We Sail, an eleven-track country record.

In 2013, Baird wrote, co-produced, and acted in the film Life Inside Out, which also featured her son Finneas and included a soundtrack she provided. The film examines the relationship between a mother and son through music. In 2016, she edited the music video for the US gold-certified song "Six Feet Under" by her daughter, Billie Eilish. Baird also appeared in a deleted scene from the 2019 film Between Two Ferns: The Movie, portraying Zach Galifianakis's sister.

Baird and O'Connell married in 1995 after eleven years together. Their son, Finneas O'Connell, was born on July 30, 1997, and their daughter, Billie Eilish O'Connell, was born on December 18, 2001, in Highland Park, Los Angeles. Baird and O'Connell chose to homeschool both children. Both Finneas and Billie Eilish have become successful singer-songwriters, music producers, and actors. In 2020, Baird launched Support + Feed, a nonprofit organization focused on providing plant-based meals to address food insecurity, food equity, and the climate crisis, with assistance from her two children.