After seeing her 1973 film debut in Blume in Love, Neil Simon cast Mason in his Broadway play The Good Doctor.[1] Shortly afterwards, Mason and Simon, a widower, fell in love and got married. That same year, Mason co-starred opposite James Caan in the 20th Century Fox film Cinderella Liberty, which netted her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. In 1977, Mason's performance in Simon's smash hit film, The Goodbye Girl, won her a second Best Actress Academy Award nomination. In 1979, Simon successfully cast Mason as Jennie MacLaine in the screen adaptation of his hit play Chapter Two, which was based on Mason's relationship with Simon up to their marriage. The film proved to be another big hit, garnering her a third Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
In 1981, Mason starred along with Kristy McNichol, James Coco, and Joan Hackett in Only When I Laugh, Simon's film adaptation of his Broadway comedy-drama The Gingerbread Lady; it was another box-office success. For her performance as Georgia Hines, Mason was highly praised and earned a fourth Best Actress Oscar nomination.
Mason's Max Dugan Returns (1983), also written by Simon, grossed a modest $17.6 million at the box office. Despite a stellar cast led by Mason, Donald Sutherland, Jason Robards and Matthew Broderick, the film was a slow starter, becoming more popular after premiering on cable TV and VHS. By this time, Mason and Simon had divorced, and her film career lost momentum. She co-starred with Clint Eastwood in the 1986 film Heartbreak Ridge, which was fairly well received and a commercial success. Mason also played a supporting role in the 1990 motion picture Stella starring Bette Midler, a remake of the 1937 film Stella Dallas.
Mason played in a New York production of Harold Pinter's Old Times. She next directed the play Juno's Swans (1986), by E. Katherine Kerr, at the Second Stage Theatre in Los Angeles.[2]
Mason played Patricia Heaton's mother in the ABC comedy series The Middle[7] from 2010 to its conclusion in 2018. Other recent TV roles have included "Grace & Frankie", "Madam Secretary" and "The Good Wife".
During the Pandemic, she appeared in zoom productions of Dear Liar with Brian Cox for Bucks County Playhouse and opposite Richard Dreyfus in "The Letters of Noel Coward" for Bay Street Playhouse in Sag Harbor, NY.
Mason was married to actor Gary Campbell from 1965 until they divorced in 1970. Her second marriage, to playwright Neil Simon, lasted from 1973 until their 1983 divorce.[citation needed]
A former long-time resident of New Mexico, she had a farm[18] in Abiquiu that grew certified organic herbs. In the late 1990s, Mason sold herbs wholesale to companies both locally and regionally before starting a line of wellness and bath and body products called "Resting in the River". Now based in New York City, in 2018 she completed building a home on a hayfield in Litchfield County, Connecticut, where she currently resides.[19] Mason has frequently visited Eastern countries like India for many decades and has been a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation since 1970.[20]
^See the Article</ref|title=Stage and screen star Marsha Mason relishes 'Rhine' role |publisher=Washingtonblade.com |date=January 26, 2017 |accessdate=September 10, 2019}}