Mary Stuart Masterson

Mary Stuart Masterson is an American actress and director born on June 28, 1966, in Los Angeles, California, to writer-director-actor-producer Peter Masterson and singer-actress Carlin Glynn. She has two siblings, Peter Jr. and Alexandra. As a teenager, Masterson attended Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in upstate New York alongside actors Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Cryer, and later studied at schools in New York, including eight months of anthropology coursework at New York University.

Masterson made her first screen appearance at age eight in The Stepford Wives (1975), playing the daughter of her real-life father. Rather than pursue a career as a child actor, she stepped away from professional work to continue her education, though she did participate in productions at the Dalton School. She returned to film in 1985 with Heaven Help Us, followed by At Close Range (1986) alongside Sean Penn and Christopher Walken, and Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), in which she played the tomboyish drummer Watts. That same year, Francis Ford Coppola cast her in Gardens of Stone, where her parents were also hired to play her on-screen parents. In 1989, she appeared in Chances Are with Cybill Shepherd, Ryan O'Neal, and Robert Downey Jr., and starred in Immediate Family opposite Glenn Close and James Woods, earning the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for the latter role.

Throughout the early 1990s, Masterson continued building a substantial film career. She starred in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), based on the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, and hosted Saturday Night Live in 1992. In 1993, she appeared opposite Johnny Depp in Benny & Joon, playing Joon, his mentally ill love interest. Subsequent film credits include Bad Girls (1994), in which she played former prostitute Anita Crown alongside Madeleine Stowe, Andie MacDowell, and Drew Barrymore, and Bed of Roses (1996) with Christian Slater.

By the early 2000s, Masterson had expanded her work into television and directing. In 2001, she directed a segment titled "The Other Side" for the television movie On the Edge, marking the beginning of her directing career, and produced the CBS series Kate Brasher, which was canceled after six episodes. In 2004, she played Dr. Helen Taussig in the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning HBO biographical drama Something the Lord Made. Between 2004 and 2007, she made five guest appearances on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Dr. Rebecca Hendrix. Later television work includes a recurring role as FBI director Eleanor Hirst in the second and third seasons of Blindspot (2017–2019), a starring role in the legal drama For Life (2020), and appearances on NCIS (2017) and Mercy (2010).

On Broadway, Masterson appeared in Alice in Wonderland and starred in the 2003 revival of Nine, the Maury Yeston musical directed by David Leveaux. Her performance in Nine earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical as well as a Theatre World Award in 2003. Her Broadway career spans from 1982 to 2003.

Masterson made her feature film directorial debut with The Cake Eaters (2007), which premiered at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival and received the Audience Award for Dramatic Feature at the Ashland Independent Film Festival in 2008. She has since returned to film acting with As You Are (2017), Skin (2018), Daniel Isn't Real (2019), and Five Nights at Freddy's (2023). Masterson has also narrated several audiobooks, including works by Julia Glass, Patricia Cornwell, James Patterson, and Lisa Scottoline.

Masterson was married to George Carl Francisco from 1990 to 1992 and to filmmaker Damon Santostefano from 2000 to 2004. In 2006, she married actor Jeremy Davidson, with whom she had appeared in a 2004 stage production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The couple have four children: son Phineas Bee, born in October 2009; twins Wilder and Clio, born in August 2011; and a fourth child born in October 2013.