Marsha Mason

Marsha Mason, born on April 3, 1942, in St. Louis, Missouri, is an American actress and theatre director whose career has spanned Broadway, film, and television for more than five decades. She was raised in Crestwood, Missouri, alongside her younger sister, Mary Melinda, and the two were brought up Catholic. Mason attended Nerinx Hall High School and Webster University, both located in Webster Groves, where she participated in theatrical productions. Her father, James Joseph Mason, worked as a printer, and her mother was Jacqueline Helena Mason, née Rakowski.

Mason's Broadway career began in 1965, and she made her formal Broadway debut as a replacement in the comedy Cactus Flower in 1968. Her early stage work also included Norman Mailer's The Deer Park, Israel Horovitz's The Indian Wants the Bronx, and Joseph Papp's 1974 production of Richard III at Lincoln Center. She appeared in Neil Simon's The Good Doctor on Broadway, a credit that also marked a turning point in her personal life, as she and Simon fell in love and married in 1973. That marriage lasted until 1983; her first marriage, to actor Gary Campbell, had run from 1965 to 1970.

On Broadway, Mason starred in a 1996 revival of The Night of the Iguana, followed the next year by Michael Cristofer's Amazing Grace. She appeared in Steel Magnolias on Broadway in 2005 alongside Delta Burke, Frances Sternhagen, Rebecca Gayheart, Lily Rabe, and Christine Ebersole, and in Impressionism in 2009. Her Broadway credits extend through 2024. Off and beyond Broadway, Mason performed in Harold Pinter's Old Times in New York, Charles L. Mee's Wintertime at Second Stage Theatre, and an Off-Broadway production of I Never Sang for My Father in April 2010, in which she played Margaret Garrison opposite Keir Dullea and Matt Servitto. She also appeared in A Feminine Ending at Playwrights Horizons and in the Shakespeare Theatre Company's All's Well That Ends Well in Washington, D.C. In 2006, she starred as Hecuba at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in the American premiere of that production. Her stage work in Washington further included Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine at Arena Stage, and she appeared off-Broadway in the Irish Repertory Theatre's production of Little Gem, for which she received an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Play.

In 1999, Mason reunited with Goodbye Girl co-star Richard Dreyfuss and writer Neil Simon in a production of The Prisoner of Second Avenue, which played in London's West End and subsequently at L.A. Theatre Works. A 2000 recording of the production earned Mason a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album. In 2022, she starred in and co-directed Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers at Hartford Stage.

Mason's directing credits are extensive. She has helmed productions of Simon's Chapter Two and Robert Harling's Steel Magnolias at the Bucks County Playhouse, as well as a benefit production of The Man Who Came to Dinner starring Walter Bobbie and Brooke Shields for the same venue. She directed the first female version of An Act of God, featuring Paige Davis, at Arizona Theatre Company, and the world premiere of Tennessee Williams' Talisman Roses with Amanda Plummer for the Tennessee Williams Festival in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She also directed Juno Stories for Second Stage in New York City and served as Associate Director with Jack O'Brien on the Roundabout Theatre's Broadway production of All My Sons. During the pandemic, she appeared in Zoom productions of Dear Liar with Brian Cox for Bucks County Playhouse and in The Letters of Noel Coward opposite Richard Dreyfuss for Bay Street Playhouse in Sag Harbor, New York.

Mason's film career launched with a small role in the 1966 film Hot Rod Hullabaloo, followed by her more prominent debut in Blume in Love in 1973. That same year she co-starred opposite James Caan in Cinderella Liberty, earning her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Simon wrote the screenplay for The Goodbye Girl in 1977, and Mason's performance in that film brought her a second Best Actress nomination as well as a Golden Globe Award, as had Cinderella Liberty before it. Simon adapted his stage play Chapter Two for the screen in 1979, casting Mason as Jennie MacLaine in a story drawn from their own relationship; the role yielded her a third Oscar nomination. Her fourth nomination came for Only When I Laugh in 1981, in which she played Georgia Hines alongside Kristy McNichol, James Coco, and Joan Hackett in Simon's adaptation of his play The Gingerbread Lady. Max Dugan Returns, also written by Simon and featuring Donald Sutherland, Jason Robards, and Matthew Broderick, followed in 1983 and grossed $17.6 million at the box office. Mason co-starred with Clint Eastwood in Heartbreak Ridge in 1986, appeared in a supporting role in the 1990 Bette Midler film Stella, and was part of the cast of Drop Dead Fred in 1991.

On television, Mason appeared in the soap opera Love of Life from 1971 to 1972 and starred in her own sitcom, Sibs, which ran from 1991 to 1992. From 1997 to 1998 she had a recurring role on Frasier as Sherry Dempsey, Martin Crane's girlfriend, a performance that earned her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. She played Patricia Heaton's mother in the ABC comedy series The Middle from 2010 through the show's conclusion, and held a recurring role on the Netflix series Grace and Frankie from 2016 until its end in 2022. Additional television credits include guest appearances on Seinfeld, Lipstick Jungle, Army Wives, Madam Secretary, and The Good Wife.

Mason directed Juno's Swans by E. Katherine Kerr at the Second Stage Theatre in Los Angeles in 1986 and has taught at HB Studio, the Herbert Berghof Studio, in New York City. She holds a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Mason was previously a long-time resident of New Mexico, where she maintained a farm in Abiquiu that produced certified organic herbs, and in the late 1990s she sold herbs wholesale before launching a line of wellness and bath products called Resting in the River. In 2018 she completed construction of a home on a hayfield in Litchfield County, Connecticut, where she currently resides.