Mary Steenburgen

Mary Nell Steenburgen (born February 8, 1953) is an American actress. She won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for playing the role of Lynda Dummar in Jonathan Demme's 1980 film Melvin and Howard. --- Steenburgen was born in Newport, Arkansas, the daughter of Nellie Mae (née Wall), a school-board secretary, and Maurice Steenburgen, a freight-train conductor who worked at the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Steenburgen grew up in north Fayetteville, Arkansas. Steenburgen moved to New York City in 1972, working at Doubleday while studying acting at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse under Will Esper. Her big break came when she was discovered by Jack Nicholson in the reception room of Paramount's New York office and was cast as the female lead in his second directorial effort, the 1978 Western Goin' South. She had a leading role in the 1979 film Time After Time as a modern woman who falls in love with author H. G. Wells, played by her first husband-to-be Malcolm McDowell. In only her third film, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 1980 film Melvin and Howard, playing Lynda Dummar, the wife of Melvin Dummar, then a trucker and aspiring singer, who claimed to have befriended reclusive eccentric Howard Hughes. She also appeared nude in the film. Another notable film appearance came in the well-received 1983 film Cross Creek, in which she played Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling. --- Steenburgen married actor Malcolm McDowell in 1980 and they had two children together: Lilly Amanda (now Lilly McDowell Walton), born January 31, 1981, and Charles Malcolm, born July 10, 1983. Steenburgen and McDowell divorced in 1990. On October 7, 1995, Steenburgen married actor Ted Danson. In September 2005, she and Danson gave a guest lecture for students at the Clinton School of Public Service where they discussed their roles in public service as well as the foundations and causes in which they are involved. An alumna of Hendrix College, Steenburgen received an honorary doctorate from the institution in 1989. In 2006, Steenburgen received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas.