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Blythe Danner

Blythe Danner has built a career that moves comfortably among stage, film and television, bringing a grounded presence to drama and an understated touch to comedy. Born in Philadelphia in 1943, she graduated from Bard College and began working in theatre during the late 1960s. Early appearances included the musical Mata Hari, the Off-Broadway production Summertree and Broadway productions of Cyrano de Bergerac and The Miser. In 1970, she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance as a free-spirited divorcée in Butterflies Are Free. Her screen work soon showed similar range. In 1972, Danner played Martha Jefferson in the film version of 1776 and took her earliest starring film role opposite Alan Alda in To Kill a Clown. She later appeared as the title character in Sidney Lumet’s Lovin’ Molly, played reporter Tracy Ballard in the science-fiction film Futureworld and portrayed a middle-aged Jewish mother in Brighton Beach Memoirs. Her film credits also include two adaptations of Pat Conroy novels, The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides. For many viewers, Danner is closely associated with the Meet the Parents comedies. She appeared opposite Robert De Niro in Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers, providing a calm counterweight within the series’ escalating family friction. Her television roles have been just as substantial. She regularly appeared as Marilyn, Will Truman’s mother, on Will & Grace and joined the main cast of the comedy-drama Huff. Her work on Huff earned consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards in 2005 and 2006. Theatre has remained a constant throughout Danner’s career. She has been a regular performer at the Williamstown Summer Theater Festival and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2015. Across mediums, her work is marked less by showiness than by control: she can sharpen a comedy, steady a family drama or give a period role an immediate human dimension.