It is Oscar month, so it is fitting that today’s entry looks at Arkansas’ own Academy Award winning actress, Mary Steenburgen.  She was born on February 8, 1953 in Newport, Arkansas.  After moving to North Little Rock as a schoolgirl, she attended North Little Rock public schools and had her first starring role as Emily in the 1971 North Little Rock Northeast High School production of Our Town, which was the new school’s first play.  (Fourteen years later, the Scott of SCOTT would grace the stage in the same high school in a proper theatre; Steenburgen had to perform in a gymnasium.)

After moving the start of a successful film career, she started returning to the stage in a London production of Holiday in 1987.  In 1993, she made her Broadway debut in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Candida (during Roundabout’s initial season with a Broadway house).  Her costars included Robert Foxworth and Robert Sean Leonard.

The next year, she starred in Marvin’s Room in Los Angeles.  She returned to the New York City stage with 2000′s The Beginning of August at the Atlantic Theatre Company.  Steenburgen has remained an active supporter and is now a member of Atlantic.  In 2007 she and husband Ted Danson were honored by the Atlantic Theatre Company.

Steenburgen in BOSTON MARRIAGE

Her two most recent stage performances are in The Exonerated and the West Coast premiere of David Mamet’s Boston Marriage directed by Mamet and costarring Alicia Silverstone and Rebecca Pidgeon.

Steenburgen has long been a supporter of the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. She and Danson served as honorary chairs of the Arkansas Rep’s recent successful capital campaign.  In addition, she has been very involved in two other Central Arkansas arts endeavors.  Steenburgen has spoken at acting workshops and lent her support in many other ways for The THEA Foundation (which encourages arts education in Arkansas).

Steenburgen has also been a supporter of the Oxford American magazine as well as the new Argenta Community Theatre in North Little Rock.  She and another Arkansan, President Bill Clinton, headlined the grand opening of this complex in 2011.