Actress. Born June 23, 1957, in Illinois. The daughter of Canadian parents, McDormand moved a good deal during her childhood, mostly throughout the Midwestern United States, to accommodate her father's profession as a Disciples of Christ preacher. The family eventually settled in Pennsylvania, where McDormand became enamoured of acting after playing Lady Macbeth in a high school theater production. After graduating as the only theater major of her year from Bethany College in West Virginia, she entered the prestigious Yale Drama School.
After Yale, McDormand moved to New York, where she roomed with her Yale Drama classmate Holly Hunter and performed with the O'Neill Playwright's Conference. Mcdormand first professional acting job came in 1982, when she traveled to Trinidad to perform in a play written by the Jamaican poet Derek Walcott. Through Hunter, she met Joel and Ethan Coen, two brothers who were casting their debut film, a low-budget thriller. McDormand won the lead in the film, that of the unfaithful wife of a Texas bar owner who decides to have her and her lover killed. Blood Simple, released in 1984 to overwhelming critical acclaim, marked the beginning of her personal and professional collaboration with director Joel Coen, whom she married in 1994. The couple has an adopted son, Pedro.
McDormand followed up on her turn in Blood Simple with an appearance as a nun in Crimewave (1985), written by Joel and Ethan Coen, and a role in the short-lived television series Leg Work (1987). Mcdormand reteamed with the Coen brothers with a supporting role in their second major effort, the outlandish comedy Raising Arizona (1987), which featured her old roommate Hunter in her first starring role, opposite Nicolas Cage.
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