Patricia Clarkson

Patricia Davies Clarkson was born on December 29, 1959, in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she was raised in Algiers, a neighborhood on the West Bank of the Mississippi River. Her father, Arthur "Buzz" Clarkson, worked as a school administrator at the Louisiana State University School of Medicine, and her mother, Jackie Clarkson, served as a New Orleans politician and councilwoman. Clarkson is one of five sisters, all of whom attended O. Perry Walker High School, where she graduated in 1977. Her maternal ancestry includes Lithuanian-Jewish, Spanish, Irish, and German roots, while her father was of English, Scottish, and Welsh descent.

Clarkson initially enrolled at Louisiana State University from 1977 to 1979 to study speech pathology before redirecting her focus toward acting. She transferred to Fordham University in New York City, graduating summa cum laude with an undergraduate degree in acting in 1982, and subsequently earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale School of Drama in 1985.

Her Broadway career began in 1986 when she joined the John Guare play The House of Blue Leaves as a replacement, taking on the role of Corrinna Stroller. She returned to Broadway in 1989 in Richard Greenberg's Eastern Standard, portraying a Wall Street investment counselor whose brother, played by Kevin Conroy, is diagnosed with AIDS; the production ran from January through March of that year. In 2014, Clarkson starred as Mrs. Kendal in a revival of Bernard Pomerance's The Elephant Man, a role that earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play. She reprised the role at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London in 2015, marking her West End debut. Her Broadway work spans 1986 to 2014, and she also received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play in 1998.

Clarkson made her feature film debut in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables in 1987, portraying Catherine Ness, the wife of Prohibition agent Eliot Ness. She followed that with a role opposite Clint Eastwood in The Dead Pool (1988), the fifth installment of the Dirty Harry series. After a period in the early 1990s during which she found it difficult to secure significant work, she appeared in Jumanji (1995) before landing a more substantial part in the independent drama High Art (1998), playing a drug-addicted German actress in New York City, a performance that earned her an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. That same year she had a small role in Playing by Heart, and in 1999 she appeared as an ailing prison warden's wife in The Green Mile, which received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Best Ensemble Cast.

The year 2003 marked a turning point in Clarkson's film career. She appeared in Pieces of April as a mother dying of cancer traveling to spend Thanksgiving with her estranged daughter, a performance that earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. That same year she played an artist who befriends a diminutive man living in a train depot in The Station Agent, which brought her a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Leading Role and the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Both films, along with All the Real Girls and The Baroness and the Pig, premiered at Sundance in 2003. She also appeared that year in Lars von Trier's Dogville.

Clarkson continued to work across a wide range of film genres in the years that followed. Her dramatic credits include Far from Heaven (2002), Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), All the King's Men (2006), Elegy (2008), Shutter Island (2010), The Party (2017), Monica (2022), and She Said (2022). Her comedy film appearances include Lars and the Real Girl (2007), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Whatever Works (2009), Easy A (2010), Friends with Benefits (2011), and Learning to Drive (2014). She also portrayed the antagonist Ava Paige in the Maze Runner science-fiction film series from 2014 to 2018.

On television, Clarkson took a recurring guest role on the HBO drama Six Feet Under between 2002 and 2005, playing Sarah O'Connor, the artist sister of Ruth Fisher. The role brought her two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series, won in 2002 and 2005 respectively. She also had a recurring role on the NBC sitcom Frasier, playing Claire French, a woman who dated the title character. Additional television credits include recurring roles on Parks and Recreation and the Netflix political drama House of Cards. Her performance in the HBO limited series Sharp Objects (2018) earned her a Golden Globe Award along with nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She earned a third Primetime Emmy Award for her role in the BBC series State of the Union (2022), playing an outspoken wife. In 2024, she appeared in a West End revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night.