Steenburgen was born February 8, 1953, in Newport, Arkansas, to Nellie Mae (née Wall),[2] a school-board secretary, and Maurice Hoffman Steenburgen, a freight-train conductor who worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad.[3][4][1][5] She has a sister, Nancy Kelly (née Steenburgen), a teacher.[6] In 1971, she enrolled at Hendrix College to study drama.[1] She subsequently traveled to Dallas at the suggestion of her drama teacher where she successfully auditioned for New York City's Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre.[1]
Career
Steenburgen moved to Manhattan in 1972 after the Neighborhood Playhouse offered her an opportunity to study acting. She worked as a server at The Magic Pan and for Doubleday while studying under William Esper.[6]
Film career
Steenburgen's break came when she was discovered by Jack Nicholson in the reception room of Paramount Pictures's New York office and was cast as the female lead in his second directorial work, the Western comedy Goin' South (1978).[6] Steenburgen had a leading role in the film Time After Time (1979), for which she won the Saturn Award for Best Actress. She played a modern woman who falls in love with author H. G. Wells, played by Malcolm McDowell, whom she married the following year.
In television, Steenburgen appeared as Kate Montgomery in Ink (1996) and co-starred as Mary Gulliver in Gulliver's Travels (1996). She has a recurring role as herself in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Steenburgen co-starred as Helen Girardi, the mother of Amber Tamblyn's title character in Joan of Arcadia. In 2011, she had a recurring role as Josephine in the HBO sitcom Bored to Death. Steenburgen starred as Anastasia Lee in the 2011 FX pilot Outlaw Country,[7] but it was passed by the network.[8] She appeared in the dark sitcom Wilfred from 2011 through 2013 as Catherine Newman, the title character's eccentric and mentally ill mother. Steenburgen had a recurring role as Diana Jessup on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock from 2012 to 2013.
In 2014, she began a recurring role as former Dixie Mafia boss Katherine Hale in the fifth and sixth seasons of Justified.
From 2015 to 2018, she starred as Gail Klosterman on the comedy series The Last Man on Earth.
From 2020 to 2021, she played the role of Maggie Clarke in the NBC musical comedy-drama series Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist for two seasons. She reprised the role for The Roku Channel television film Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas.
Music career
In 2007, Steenburgen underwent minor surgery on her arm, which required a general anaesthetic; shortly thereafter, she began experiencing "music (...) playing in her head day and night". She subsequently took music lessons so that she could write down what she was hearing, and by 2013 had almost 50 songwriting credits.[9] She has collaborated with musicians from Nashville and was also signed to Universal Music Group as a songwriter.[10] She performs one of her own songs in Last Vegas.[11]
In 2018, her composition "Glasgow (No Place Like Home)" as performed by Jessie Buckley featured as the climactic musical moment in the film Wild Rose and won Steenburgen several awards, including Critic Choice Award.[12] On October 30, 2020, Steenburgen signed a global publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group.[13]
Personal life
In 1978, Steenburgen met and began dating actor Malcolm McDowell while they were co-starring in Time After Time.[14] They married and had two children together, including son Charlie McDowell. They divorced in 1990, and he remarried the next year.[15] On October 7, 1995, Steenburgen married actor Ted Danson, whom she had met on the set of the film Pontiac Moon, and became the stepmother to Danson's two daughters from his previous marriage to producer Cassandra Coates.[16][17]
Steenburgen resides in the Los Angeles area with her family.[18] An alumna of Hendrix College, she received an honorary doctorate from the institution in 1989.[19] In 2006, Steenburgen received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas.[20] In September 2005, she and Danson gave a guest lecture for students at the Clinton School of Public Service, where they discussed their roles in public service as well as the foundations and causes in which they are involved.[21]
Since 2014, Steenburgen's son Charlie McDowell has had a running joke at her expense, claiming on numerous occasions on social media that his mother is actress Andie MacDowell.[24]
