Frances Louise McDormand (born Cynthia Ann Smith, June 23, 1957) is an American actress. She has been hailed as one of the most talented actresses of her generation and is known for her portrayal of unique, quirky and headstrong female characters. She has received numerous accolades, including 4 Academy Awards, 2 Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award, making her one of the few performers to achieve the “Triple Crown of Acting” (alongside Helen Hayes, Thomas Mitchell, Ingrid Bergman, Shirley Booth, Melvyn Douglas, Paul Scofield, Jack Albertson, Rita Moreno, Maureen Stapleton, Jason Robards, Jessica Tandy, Jeremy Irons, Anne Bancroft, Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Smith, Al Pacino, Geoffrey Rush, Ellen Burstyn, Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, Jessica Lange, Viola Davis, and Glenda Jackson).
She made her film debut Joel & Ethan Coen’s Blood Simple (1984), with John Getz, Dan Hedaya, and M. Emmett Walsh. She and Joel have been married since 1984 and have collaborated on numerous films. She received her first received Academy Award nomination (Best Supporting Actress) for Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning (1988), with Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe, Brad Dourif, R. Lee Ermey, Gailard Sartain, Stephen Tobolowsky, Michael Rooker, Pruitt Taylor Vince. Badja Djola, Kevin Dunn, Frankie Faison, and Tobin Bell. Other films in the 1980s include Sam Raimi’s Crimewave (1985), with Reed Birney, Sheree J. Wilson, Paul L. Smith, Brion James, Louise Lasser, and Bruce Campbell; Raising Arizona (1987), with Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, John Goodman, William Forsythe, and Trey Wilson; and Chattahoochee (1989), with Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, Pamela Reed, Ned Beatty, and Walsh.
Films in the 1990s include Darkman (1990), with Liam Neeson, Colin Friels, Larry Drake, Ted Raimi, Dan Hicks, Nicholas Worth, Dan Bell, and Rafael H. Robledo; an uncredited role in Miller’s Crossing (1990), with Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro, Jon Polito, J. E. Freeman, and Albert Finney; Ken Loach’s Hidden Agenda (1990), with Brian Cox, Dourif, Maurice Roëves, Ian McElhinney, Mai Zetterling, and Michelle Fairley; The Butcher’s Wife (1991), with Demi Moore, Jeff Daniels, George Dzundza, Margaret Colin, and Mary Steenburgen; Passed Away (1992), with Bob Hoskins, Blair Brown, Tim Curry, William Petersen, Pamela Reed, Peter Riegert, Maureen Stapleton, Nancy Travis, and Jack Warden;; Robert Altman‘s Short Cuts (1993), with Andie MacDowell, Bruce Davison, Julianne Moore, Matthew Modine, Anne Archer, Fred Ward, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Chris Penn, Lili Taylor, Robert Downey Jr., Madeleine Stowe, Tim Robbins, Lily Tomlin, Tom Waits, Peter Gallagher, Annie Ross, Lori Singer, Jack Lemmon, Lyle Lovett, Buck Henry, and Huey Lewis; and John Boorman’s Beyond Rangoon (1995), with Patricia Arquette and Spalding Gray.
She won her first Academy Award for best Actress for Fargo (1996), with William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare, and Harve Presnell. Other films in the mid to late 1990s include Primal Fear (1996), with Richard Gere, Laura Linney, John Mahoney, Alfre Woodard, and Edward Norton; John Sayles‘s Lone Star (1996), with Chris Cooper, Kris Kristofferson, Matthew McConaughey and Elizabeth Peña; Bruce Beresford’s Paradise Road (1997), with Glenn Close, Pauline Collins, Julianna Margulies, Jennifer Ehle, Cate Blanchett, and Elizabeth Spriggs; Johnny Skidmarks (1998), with Peter Gallagher, John Lithgow, John Kapelos, and Jack Black; Madeline (1998), with Nigel Hawthorne; and Talk of Angels (1998), with Polly Walker, Vincent Perez, Franco Nero, Marisa Paredes, and Penélope Cruz.
She received her second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (2000), with Patrick Fugit, Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup, Jason Lee, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Other films in the early 2000s include Curtis Hanson’s Wonder Boys (2000), with Michael Douglas, Tobey Mguire, Katie Holmes, Rip Torn, and Downey; The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), with Billy Bob Thornton, James Gandolfini, Michael Badalucco, Richard Jenkins, Scarlett Johansson, Jon Polito, and Tony Shalhoub; Lisa Cholodenko’s Laurel Canyon (2002), with Christian Bale, Kate Beckinsale, Natascha McElhone, and Alessandro Nivola; Michael Canton-Jones’s City by the Sea (2002), with Robert De Niro, James Franco, Eliza Dushku, Forsythe. Dzundza, and Patti Lupone; and Nancy Meyers’s Something’s Gotta Give (2003), with Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Keanu Reeves, Amanda Peet, and Jon Favreau.
She received her third Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Niki Caro’s North Country (2005), with Charlize Theron, Sean Bean, Richard Jenkins, Michelle Monaghan, Jeremy Renner, Woody Harrelson, and Sissy Spacek. Other films in the mid to late 2000s include Karyn Kusama’s Æon Flux (2005), with Theron, Marton Csokas, Jonny Lee Miller, Sophie Okonedo, Pete Postlethwaite, and Nikolai Kinski; Nicole Holofcener‘s Friends with Money (2006), with Jennifer Anniston, Joan Cusack, Catherine Keener, Jason Isaacs, Scott Caan, Simon McBurney, Greg Germann, and Bob Stephenson; Bharat Nalluri’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008), with Amy Adams, Lee Pace, Ciarán Hinds, Shirley Henderson, and Mark Strong; and Burn After Reading (2008), with George Clooney, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Jenkins, Brad Pitt, and J.K. Simmons.
Films in the early 2010s include Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be the Place (2011), with Sean Penn, Judd Hirsch, Even Hewson, Kerry Condon, Harry Dean Stanton, and Joyce Van Patton; Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), with Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Patrick Dempsey, Kevin Dunn, Julie White, Ken Jeong, Alan Tudyk, Glenn Morshower, Lester Speight, and Malkovich; Wes Anderson‘s Moonrise Kingdom (2012), with Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Harvey Keitel, and Bob Balaban, a voice role in Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012), with Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Richter,Jessica Chastain, Bryan Cranston, and Martin Short; Gus Van Sant‘s Promised Land (2012), with Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Hal Holbrook; an uncredited voice role in Every Secret Thing (2014), with Diane Lane, Elizabeth Banks, Dakota Fanning, Danielle Macdonald, and Nate Parker; and a voice role in Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur (2015), with Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright, Steve Zahn, Sam Elliott, Anna Paquin, A.J. Buckley, and Jeffrey Wright.
She won her second Best Actress Academy Award for Martin McDonagh‘s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (co-starring Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges, Željko Ivanek, Caleb Landry Jones, Clarke Peters, John Hawkes, Samara Weaving, Peter Dinklage, and Kathryn Newton. Other films in the mid to late 2010s include Hail, Caesar! (2016), with Josh Brolin, Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Johansson, Swinton, and Channing Tatum; and a voice role in Isle of Dogs (2018), with Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Norton, Liev Schreiber, Murray, Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Johansson, Kunichi Nomura, Swinton, Ken Watanabe, Akira Ito, Greta Gerwig, Akira Takayama, F. Murray Abraham, Yojiro Noda, Fisher Stevens, Mari Natsuki, Nijiro Murakami, Yoko Ono, Keitel and Frank Wood.
She won her third Academy Award for Best Actress and her first Best Picture Academy Award for Chloé Zhao‘s Nomadland (2020), with David Strathairn. She received a second Best Picture nomination for Sarah Polley’s Women Talking (2022), with Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, and Ben Whishaw. Other films in the 2020s The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), with Denzel Washington, Bertie Carvel, Alex Hassell, Corey Hawkins, Harry Melling, Kathryn Hunter, and Brendan Gleeson; The French Dispatch (2021), with Owen Wilson, Benicio del Toro, Tony Revolori, Adrien Brody, Swinton, Balaban, Henry Winkler, Léa Seydoux, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Christoph Waltz, Rupert Friend, Jeffrey Wright, Liev Schreiber, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Dafoe, Norton, Saoirse Ronan, Murray, Elisabeth Moss, Schwartzman, Fisher Stevens, and Anjelica Huston; and a voice role in John Watts’s Wolfs (2024), with Clooney, Pitt, Amy Ryan, Austin Abrams, Poorna Jagannathan, Zlatko Burić, and Richard Kind.
Each review will be linked to the title below.
(*seen originally in theaters)
(**seen released in theaters)
- Blood Simple (1984) – directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
- Crimewave (1985) – directed by Sam Raimi
- Raising Arizona (1987) – directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
- Mississippi Burning (1988) – directed by Alan Parker
- Chattahoochee (1989) – directed by Mick Jackson
- Hidden Agenda (1990) – directed by Ken Loach
- Miller’s Crossing (1990) – directed by Joel & Ethan Coen – uncredited
- Darkman (1990) – directed by Sam Raimi
- Barton Fink (1991) – directed by Joel & Ethan Coen – uncredited voice
- The Butcher’s Wife (1991) – directed by Terry Hughes
- Passed Away (1992) – directed by Charlie Peters
- Short Cuts (1993) – directed by Robert Altman
- Bleeding Hearts (1994) – directed by Gregory Hines
- The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) – directed by Joel & Ethan Coen – uncredited
- Beyond Rangoon (1995) – directed by John Boorman
- Palookaville (1995) – directed by Alan Taylor
- Fargo (1996)** – directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
- Primal Fear (1996) – directed by Gregory Hoblit
- Lone Star (1996) – directed by John Sayles
- Paradise Road (1997) – directed by Bruce Beresford
- Johnny Skidmarks (1998) – directed by John Raffo
- Madeline (1998)* – directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer
- Talk of Angels (1998) – directed by Nick Hamm
- Wonder Boys (2000) – directed by Curtis Hanson
- Almost Famous (2000) – directed by Cameron Crowe
- The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) – directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
- Laurel Canyon (2002) – directed by Lisa Cholodenko
- City by the Sea (2002) – directed by Michael Caton-Jones
- Something’s Gotta Give (2003)* – directed by Nancy Meyers
- North Country (2005) – directed by Niki Caro
- Æon Flux (2005) – directed by Karyn Kusama
- Friends with Money (2006) – directed by Nicole Holofcener
- Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) – directed by Bharat Nalluri
- Burn After Reading (2008)* – directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
- This Must Be the Place (2011) – directed by Paolo Sorrentino
- Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)* – Michael Bay
- Moonrise Kingdom (2012)* – directed by Wes Anderson
- Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012) – directed by Eric Darnell, Conrad Vernon & Tom McGrath
- Promised Land (2012) – directed by Gus Van Sant
- Every Secret Thing (2014) – directed by Amy J. Berg – producer only
- The Good Dinosaur (2015) – directed by Peter Sohn
- Hail, Caesar! (2016)* – directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
- Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)* – directed by Martin McDonagh
- Isle of Dogs (2018)* – directed by Wes Anderson
- Nomadland (2020) – directed by Chloé Zhao – also producer
- The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (2021)* – directed by Wes Anderson
- The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) – directed by Joel Coen – also producer
- Women Talking (2022) – directed by Sarah Polley – also producer
- Wolfs (2024) – directed by Jon Watts
- Jack of Spades (2026) – directed by Joel Coen
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