Mary Steenburgen

Born: February 8 1953
Where: Newport, Arkansas, USA

The offbeat actress is probably best known for her Oscar-winning performance as Melvin's flustered wife in Jonathan Demme's Melvin and Howard.

Despite the high profile brought by the Academy Award, she has opted instead to play modest projects such as Sunshine State and What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

After years of performing improvisational comedy in New York, Jack Nicholson cast her in Goin South after spotting in the New York offices of Paramount.

Martin Ritt's Cross Creek provided a strong showcase as she enacted writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' journey of self-discovery in a rustic Florida cabin.

Her Southern upbringing also lent authority to her interpretation of a former beauty queen in Miss Firecracker.

Steenburgen's other 80s credits included Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, Lindsay Anderson's The Whales of August and as Steve Martin's wife in Ron Howard's Parenthood.

She made her London stage debut opposite future husband Malcolm McDowall in a 1987 revival of Philip Barry's Holiday directed by Lindsay Anderson.

The daughter of a Union Pacific Railroad conductor, she made her executive producing debut with End of the Line, the Capraesque story of aging railroad men facing the shutdown of their line.

Steenburgen appeared in two 1993 films: What's Eating Gilbert Grape, as an unhappy housewife having an affair with Johnny Depp, and Demme's Philadelphia, as the attorney representing a law firm accused of discrimination.

She co-starred with Ted Danson (whom she married in 1995) in the poorly received road movie Pontiac Moon.

Steenburgen proved radiant not doing much of anything in the fantasy Powder and as the president's Quaker mother in Oliver Stone's Nixon in 1995.

Other roles included Life as a House and a brief supporting turn as a doctor in the mawkish Sean Penn dramedy I Am Sam.

In 2002 she began a fruitful collaboration with writer-director John Sayles when she appeared with Gordon Clapp as part of an uptight Floridian couple in the ensemble of Sunshine State.

The following year she played one of a group of American women living temporarily in Mexico while waiting to adopt in Sayles' Casa de los Babys.

Also in 2003, Steenburgen had a supporting role as the chagrined wife of Will Farrell's biological father (James Caan) in the Christmas movie Elf.