Actress Amy Madigan was born in the United States on September 11, 1950. Her performance in the 1985 movie Twice in a Lifetime earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Love Child (1982), Places in the Heart (1984), Field of Dreams (1989), Uncle Buck (1989), The Dark Half (1993), Pollock (2000), and Gone Baby Gone are some of her additional filmography credits.
She was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie. She received the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Television Series for her performance as Sarah Weddington in the 1989 television movie Roe vs. Wade.
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Table of Contents
Early Life
A third-generation Roman Catholic Irish American family, Amy Madigan was born in Chicago. John J. Madigan, her father, was a well-known journalist who worked for Newsweek and contributed political analysis to shows like Meet the Press and Face the Nation (1918–2012). He conducted interviews with a variety of political figures, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Richard Nixon, and aired his program with WBBM (AM). Dolores (née Hanlon; 1921–1992), her mother, was a community theater performer and administrative assistant. Her two brothers are Jim and Jack.
Amy Madigan participated in school plays while she was a student at St. Aquinas Dominican High School in Chicago. She received a B.A. in philosophy from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, after studying piano at the Chicago Conservatory of Music in the 1960s. In 1974, she relocated to Los Angeles. At the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, she later studied acting.
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Career
Amy Madigan switched from singing to acting in the 1980s and attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. In 1981, she played Adele on an episode of Hart to Hart; later, she appeared in the television movie Crazy Times. She made her acting debut the following year in Love Child as Terry Jean Moore, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year – Actress. She portrayed Alison Ransom in the 1983 television movie The Day After.
She played McCoy in the 1984 movie Streets of Fire, and she played Viola Kelsey in the supporting role in Places in the Heart. She co-starred with Carol Burnett in Marsha Norman’s 1985 television movie The Laundromat. She was honored with a CableACE Award for Deedee Johnson. After that, she and her husband Ed Harris co-starred as Glory Scheer in Louis Malle’s Alamo Bay. She portrayed Sunny Mackenzie-Sobel in Twice in a Lifetime, which was released in 1985. For her role, she has been nominated for both the Golden Globe and the Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture.
Amy Madigan made her Off-Broadway debut in 1987 playing Sue Jack Tiller in Beth Henley’s The Lucky Spot, for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play and received a Theatre World Award. For her work in The Prince of Pennsylvania, she was nominated in 1988 for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female. She appeared in A Lie of the Mind at the Mark Taper Forum that year. She portrayed Kevin Costner’s wife in the Academy Award-nominated best picture Field of Dreams and John Candy’s character Chanice Kobolowski’s girlfriend in the John Hughes film Uncle Buck.
She co-wrote, co-starred in, and produced the 1996 television movie Riders of the Purple Sage with Harris. She then starred in Female Perversions alongside Tilda Swinton. For her portrayal of Brett Armerson in the movie Loved, she was nominated in 1997 for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female. She played Peggy Guggenheim in the 2000 movie Pollock, which also starred her husband and was written, produced, and directed by him.
In the 2002 television movie The Laramie Project, she played Reggie Fluty, the cop who came to save the dying Matthew Shepard. In the HBO series Carnivále from 2003 to 2005, Madigan played Iris Crowe/Irina, the sister of the antagonist Justin Crowe. She played Lori Lansky in Adam Rapp’s 2005 film Winter Passing.
The Emmy-winning television movie The Path to 9/11 featured her in a supporting role as Patricia Carver, an analyst at the CIA headquarters. In the Ben Affleck-directed movie Gone Baby Gone in 2007, she portrayed Beatrice “Bea” McCready, Helene’s in-law. Amy Ryan played Helene. She appeared in numerous episodes of the ABC medical program Grey’s Anatomy in 2008 as Dr. Katharine Wyatt.
Later, she played Gretchen Lagardi in a cameo appearance on TNT’s crime drama series Saving Grace. She appeared as a special guest in the final Memphis Beat episode on TNT in 2011. She played Halie in the 2016 Pershing Square Signature Center production of The New Group’s production of Sam Shepard’s play Buried Child. In November 2016, it moved to Trafalgar Studios in the West End, where Madigan played the same part once more.
Ed Harris and Amy Madigan have been wed since November 21, 1983. One daughter was born to them. Harris and Amy Madigan have worked together frequently during their careers.
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Who Is Ed Harris?
Ed Harris was born on November 28, 1950, in Englewood, New Jersey. His father Robert worked at the Art Institute of Chicago’s bookstore and was a member of the Fred Waring chorus. His mother Margaret was a travel agent. With his brothers Robert and Paul, Ed grew up in a Presbyterian family in Tenafly, New Jersey, where he also attended Tenafly High School. In high school, Harris participated in football, serving as team captain his senior year.
He enrolled at Columbia University after graduating in 1969, where he developed a passion for acting. However, two years later, Ed’s family relocated, and he decided to follow them. After enrolling at the University of Oklahoma, he started acting in regional plays until relocating to Los Angeles in 1973. In 1975, Harris graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts.
His Career
Ed made his television debut in an episode of the NBC series “Gibbsville” in 1976. He has performed in productions of Tennessee Williams’ “Kingdom of Earth” and Thomas Rickman’s “Baalam” at the Pasadena Repertory Theatre. Then he appeared in TV movies like “The Amazing Howard Hughes” and “The Seekers” as well as the films “Coma“, “The Rockford Files” (1978), “David Cassidy: Man Undercover” (1978), and “Barnaby Jones” (1979).
In the 1980s, Harris appeared in 15 movies, including “The Right Stuff” (1983), “Places in the Heart” (1984), “To Kill a Priest” (1988), and the science fiction movie “The Abyss,” which was directed by James Cameron and brought in $90 million at the box office.
Ed made an appearance in Stephen King’s “Creepshow” in 1982, and he continued to portray the Master of Horror in “Needful Things” in 1993 and “The Stand” in 1994. He participated in the television movies “The Aliens Are Coming” (1980) and “The Last Innocent Man” (1987) and made cameo appearances on “CHiPs” (1981) and “Hart to Hart” (1981). He was also nominated for a Golden Globe for the movie “Jackknife.”
In the 1990s, Ed co-starred with Tom Cruise in the box office smash “The Firm” (1993), played E. Howard Hunt in “Nixon,” won a Golden Globe for “The Truman Show” (1998). He also won a Valladolid International Film Festival Award for 1992’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.” He portrayed Mission Control Director Gene Kranz in the critically acclaimed 1995 picture “Apollo 13,” which earned $355.2 million at the box office. The year after, he produced and starred in the television movie “Riders of the Purple Sage.”
In the 2000 film “Pollock,” which he also produced and directed, Harris played the artist Jackson Pollock. He then starred in the following films: “A Beautiful Mind” (2001), “Enemy at the Gates” (2001), “The Hours” (2002), and “The Human Stain” (2003). He appeared in the movies “Winter Passing” and “A History of Violence,” as well as the HBO miniseries “Empire Falls” in 2005. In the films “Copying Beethoven” from 2006 and “Gone Baby Gone,” “Cleaner,” and “National Treasure: Book of Secrets,” Ed played Ludwig van Beethoven.
Harris won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of John McCain in the HBO movie “Game Change” in 2012. He then starred in “Snowpiercer” (2013), “Cymbeline” (2015), and “Rules Don’t Apply” (2016) and provided the voice of John McCain in the animated film “Planes: Fire & Rescue” and the Sandra Bullock-George Clooney movie “Gravity” (2013).
Ed was cast as the Man in Black, a cruel antagonist, in the science fiction/western/dystopian television series “Westworld” in 2016. He has since acted in the movies “Mother!” (2017), “Kodachrome” (2017), and “The Last Full Measure” (2019). He acted as George S. Patton in the 2020 film “Resistance,” and he appeared in the 2019 film “Top Gun: Maverick.”
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Personal Life
On November 21, 1983, Ed wed his “Places in the Heart” co-star Amy Madigan, and on May 3, 1993, their daughter Lily was born. Amy first encountered Ed in 1980 when she saw him on stage in “Cowboy Mouth,” a play by Sam Shepherd.
A year later, they met while performing in a play together. To reverse the merger between SAG and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Harris, Martin Sheen, Ed Asner, and several other actors sued Screen Actors Guild President Ken Howard and a couple of the organization’s Vice Presidents in 2012.
