Joan Allen

Joan Allen was born on August 20, 1956 in Rochelle, Illinois, the

youngest of four children. She is the daughter of homemaker Dorothea

Marie (Wirth) and gas station owner James Jefferson Allen. Her mother’s

family was German, and her father had English, Scots-Irish, and German

ancestry. She attended Rochelle Township High School where she was

voted most likely to succeed. Joining Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf

Theatre Company ensemble in 1977, she was one of the group’s original

members and starred in a number of its original productions. Her first

major film credits included two critically-lauded supporting

performances that showcased her versatility: a comedic turn in the

suburban murder mystery

Compromising Positions (1985)

and a dramatic role as a blind woman befriended by a serial killer in

Manhunter (1986). Around the same time,

Allen was making a name for herself on the New York stage; she would

eventually become one of the New York theater world’s most honored

actresses and a winner of every major prize for her work on Broadway

and off. She received a Best Actress Tony Award in 1988 for her

performance, opposite John Malkovich, in

Lanford Wilson’s Burn This and was

Tony-nominated in the same category in 1989 for the title role in The

Heidi Chronicles.Continuing her work in film as well, Allen received her first Academy

Award nomination for her role as Pat Nixon in

Oliver Stone’s

Nixon (1995), for which she also won awards

from seven critics’ associations, including the Los Angeles Film

Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics. Allen

received her second consecutive Best Supporting Actress Oscar

nomination for her role in

Arthur Miller’s

Crucible (1996). Subsequently,

her work in The Ice Storm (1997),

opposite Kevin Kline and

Sigourney Weaver, and in

Pleasantville (1998), opposite

William H. Macy and

Jeff Daniels, earned her high

praise and several critics’ awards; she also co-starred in the action

blockbuster Face/Off (1997) opposite

John Travolta and

Nicolas Cage. For her starring role in

The Contender (2000), Allen

received Best Actress nominations at the Golden Globes, the Academy

Awards, the SAG Awards, and the Independent Spirit Awards.Throughout the early 2000s Allen worked in both film and television,

with roles in three of the Bourne films –

The Bourne Supremacy (2004),

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007),

and The Bourne Legacy (2012) –

as well as The Notebook (2004),

The Upside of Anger (2005),

and Death Race (2008). Allen also

received Emmy nominations for

The Mists of Avalon (2001)

and for the title role in the biopic

Georgia O’Keeffe (2009),

for which she was also executive producer. She was also recently seen

in HBO’s drama series Luck (2011).Allen married actor

Peter Friedman in 1990, and the

two divorced in 2002; Allen’s daughter Sadie was born in 1994.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jonda R. Boomgarden