Mary-Joan Negro

Mary-Joan Negro, born January 9, 1951, in Yonkers, New York, is an actress of stage, film, and television whose career spans from the early 1970s through the present. She has accumulated credits in nearly fifty television productions and films alongside extensive stage work, and since the mid-1990s has also worked as a director and theatre educator.

Negro earned a BA in Drama and Language Arts from the University of Michigan before receiving a Juilliard scholarship. In 1970 she entered the inaugural class of Juilliard's Drama Division, founded under John Houseman, alongside classmates Kevin Kline and David Ogden Stiers. She completed the program in 1972, at which point Houseman moved to establish an equity company. Negro became a founding member of the resulting organization, The Acting Company, formed by Houseman and Margot Harley in New York City. She is also a founding member of Joseph Stern's Matrix Theatre Company in Los Angeles and of The Antaeus Company.

Her Broadway career ran from 1973 to 1985 and included productions such as The Loves of Anatol, Scenes and Revelations, Wings, and The Three Sisters. Her performance in Arthur Kopit's Wings, directed by John Madden, earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1979. Beyond Broadway, her stage work extended to off-Broadway productions and American repertory companies including San Diego's Old Globe Theatre and the O'Neill Playwrights Conference in Connecticut.

Negro's television work began in the 1970s with appearances on series including Kojak in 1976 and The Andros Targets in 1977, as well as the television movie The Family Man in 1979. That same decade, she appeared in a PBS Great Performances production of William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life, featuring Kevin Kline, in which she played the role of Society Lady. In 1983, PBS broadcast an American Playhouse adaptation of Kopit's Wings, in which Negro portrayed the role of Amy.

Her television credits through the 1980s included Another World in 1982, Remington Steele in 1983, two episodes of Spenser: For Hire in 1986, and the television movie The Littlest Victims in 1989. She appeared twice on the CBS series The Equalizer: in the 1988 episode "The Child Broker" as Irene Winters, the single mother of a teenager being drawn into criminality, and in the 1989 episode "Lullaby of Darkness" as Rebecca Morrison, the wife of an abusive husband played by Stephen Lang. She also appeared in the ABC Afterschool Special episode "Date Rape" in 1988 as Helen Matian, and in the CBS Schoolbreak Special "Other Mothers" in 1993 as Barbara Fitts.

Negro held two separate roles on NBC's Law and Order, first in the 1991 episode "In Memory Of" and again in the 1994 episode "White Rabbit," in which she played Rita Levitan, an alias for a character whose real name is Susan Forrest, a former member of a radical anti-war group accused of murdering a police officer during a heist twenty-five years earlier. During the 1990s she also had a recurring role as Roberta Braun on The Practice beginning in 1997, and appeared on L.A. Law in 1990, Touched by an Angel in 1998, and in the television movie The Patron Saint of Liars in 1998.

In 2001, Negro made guest appearances on NYPD Blue as Mary McElroy, on Frasier as Joanne, and returned to The Practice in a new role as attorney Audrey Turner. Subsequent television work included Crossing Jordan in 2002, Cold Case in 2004 as Renee, Judging Amy in 2004 as Pam Morton, Showtime's Huff in 2004, Commander in Chief in 2006 as Margaret Shoop, and ER in 2006 as Emma Hadley. Her theatrical film appearances include Dominick and Eugene in 1988, Moonbeams in 2001, Employee of the Month in 2004, and Mont Reve in 2012.

In addition to performing, Negro directs and teaches at institutions including The Acting Company, the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble in Los Angeles, the California Institute of the Arts, and the University of Southern California, where she holds the position of Professor of Theatre Practice. She was married to actor Norman Snow, who was also a member of The Acting Company.