What is Visions for Tomorrow?
Mary McDonnell
Mary McDonnell- Two-time Academy Award and Golden Globe-nominated actress Mary McDonnell has transformed both period and present day screen roles into dynamic character portrayals. Among Ms. McDonnell’s film credits are Richard Kelley’s Donnie Darko, Lawrence Kasdan’s Grand Canyon and Mumford, John Sayles’ Matewan and Passion Fish with Alfre Woodard, Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves, Sneakers with Robert Redford and Sidney Poitier, Blue Chips, and Independence Day (her first journey into science fiction).
- For television, Ms. McDonnell recently completed Mrs. Harris for HBO, opposite Annette Bening and Ben Kingsley. Prior to that, she appeared in The Locket for Hallmark with Vanessa Redgrave. She received a 2002 Emmy Nomination for her work as Eleanor Carter on ER. Other television credits include: High Society with Jean Smart, Replacing Dad, For All Time, Behind the Mask - all for CBS, Arthur Miller’s American Clock for TNT and O Pioneers! for PBS with her husband, actor Randle Mell. Most recently Ms. McDonnell has garnered attention for her role as President Laura Roslin on the critically-acclaimed SCI FI Channel series Battlestar Galactica.
- Equally at home in film, television and theater, Ms. McDonnell starred on Broadway in the title role of Wendy Wasserstein’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Heidi Chronicles, Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke (Miss Alma) and Execution of Justice (Maryanne White). Off-Broadway, she performed in many New York and world premieres of some of the finest American playwrights, among them, Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child and John Patrick Shanley’s Savage In Limbo. She received an Obie award for her performance in Emily Mann’s Still Life. Some of her other credits both off-Broadway and regionally are Three Ways Home, A Weekend Near Madison, The Vagina Monologues, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Three Sisters and A Doll’s House.
- Ms. McDonnell last appeared on the stage in Los Angeles as “Troy” in the play James and The Handless Maiden, directed by Randle Mell. She is also in the process of adapting the renowned Irish columnist and novelist Nuala O’ Faolain’s Are You Somebody into a one-woman show.