Actors - Blythe Danner

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	Actors - Blythe Danner

Blythe Katherine Danner (born February 3, 1943) is a prolific, Emmy-winning American actress who has appeared in numerous stage, screen, and film roles.

Danner was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a Quaker family, the daughter of a bank executive. She has two brothers — opera singer/actor Harry Danner, and violin maker William Moennig (half-brother). She attended the private George School, in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and Bard College, where she was graduated in 1965. She holds three honorary doctorates of fine arts from Bard, Williams College, and Hobart.

Acting career

Danner first appeared on stage with the Theater Company of Boston and the Trinity Square Playhouse of Boston, and first gained national attention at age 25 by winning the Theatre World Award for her performance in the Lincoln Center Rep's production of The Miser. She went on to win a Tony Award in 1970 for her Broadway debut in Butterflies Are Free
, playing the role later portrayed by Goldie Hawn in the film adaptation. The same year she appeared in her first film role, in a television production of Dr. Cook's Garden. She also received Tony nominations in 1980 for the original Broadway production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal, in 1988 for a revival of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama A Streetcar Named Desire, and again in 2001 for a revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies. Danner was a close friend of actor Christopher Reeve and appeared with him in several plays.

Due to Danner's WASPy appearance and husky voice, she most frequently is cast as a middle class or upper class wife, or more lately, matriarch; although in 1986 in Brighton Beach Memoirs
, she portrayed a middle-aged Jewish woman, and in 1982 in the TV movie Inside the Third Reich
, she played the wife of Albert Speer. Her earliest starring film roles were opposite Alan Alda in To Kill a Clown (1972) and in the title role of Lovin' Molly
(1974), directed by Sidney Lumet. She has appeared in two films based on the novels of Pat Conroy, The Great Santini
(1979) and The Prince of Tides
(1991), as well as two television movies adapted from books by Anne Tyler, Saint Maybe and Back When We Were Grownups, both for the Hallmark Hall of Fame.

Danner is more recently known for her role opposite Robert De Niro in the comedy hit Meet the Parents
(2000) and its 2004 sequel, Meet the Fockers
(with Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman). She currently stars in the cable TV series Huff, which premiered in 2004. Since 2001, she has regularly guest starred on Will and Grace as Will's mother Marilyn. In 2005 she was nominated for three Emmy Awards, for her work on Will and Grace, Huff and Back When We Were Grownups. Emmy host Ellen DeGeneres even poked fun at her during the ceremony, saying that Danner shouldn't be nervous because she's almost certain to win at least one Emmy. And indeed she did: Danner won Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (for Huff, and it was her first Emmy win) and thanked her daughter and late husband, among others. She said New Orleans (which had recently been devastated by Hurricane Katrina) was her husband's favorite city, and ended by paying tribute to "our sons and daughters in Iraq", followed by, "let's get the heck outta there!"

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