Mare Winningham

Mary Megan "Mare" Winningham (born May 16, 1959) is an American actress and singer-songwriter.  She has been nominated once for an  Academy Award,  Golden Globe and  Drama Desk, 8  Emmy Award nominations (winning two), and has also won an  Independent Spirit Award and two  Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. She is best known for performances in  St. Elmo's Fire,  Miracle Mile,  Turner & Hooch,  The War,  Georgia,  George Wallace,  Dandelion,  Brothers,  Swing Vote<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">,  Mildred Pierce<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;"> and  Hatfields & McCoys<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">. ==Early life<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;">[edit] ==

<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Winningham was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and raised in Northridge, California. She has three brothers and one sister. Her father was the chairman of the Department of Physical Education at California State University, Northridge(CSUN) and her mother was an English teacher and college counsellor at Monroe High School. She credits her first interest in acting to seeing an interview with Kym Karath (who played Gretl in The Sound of Music) on Art Linkletter'stelevision show House Party when she was five or six years old.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Winningham attended Andasol Ave. Elementary School, where her favorite activities included drama and playing the guitar and drums. She took the extended drama option at Patrick Henry Junior High School and continued to study over her summer vacations at CSUN's Teenage Drama Workshop. It was at this time that she adopted the nickname "Mare". Her mother arranged for her to go to Chatsworth High School. In Grade 12, Winningham starred in a production ofThe Sound of Music, playing the part of Maria, opposite classmate Kevin Spacey as Captain Von Trapp. ==Career<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;">[edit] ==

Acting
<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Winningham began her career as a singer-songwriter. In 1976, she got her break singing <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  The Beatles<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">song " Here, There and Everywhere<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">" on <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  The Gong Show<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">. Though Winningham received no record contracts as result of the appearance, she was signed to an acting contract by <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Hollywood<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">agent Meyer Mishkin, and received her <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Screen Actor's Guild<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">card for doing three lines in an episode of  James at 15<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">. That year she was offered a role on <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Young Pioneers<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">and <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Young Pioneers Christmas<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">, pilots for the short-lived 1978 drama <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  The Young Pioneers<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">. Though the series ended with just three episodes being broadcast, a number of television projects followed, including parts on <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Police Woman<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">in 1978 and <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  Starsky and Hutch<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">in 1979. Later that same year, she played the role of teenage outcast Jenny Flowers in the made-for-TV movie of the week called, <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">  The Death of Ocean View Park<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">In 1980, Winningham starred in Off the Minnesota Strip playing a young prostitute. She then won an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress In A Miniseries Or A Movie for her role in the critically acclaimed Amber Waves, a made-for-TV movie about a rough farmer (Dennis Weaver) who finds he is dying of cancer. In that year, she also broke into film in One Trick Pony, starring Paul Simon. In 1983, Winningham was nominated for a Canadian Genie Award for her work in the futuristic 1981 drama Threshold, and appeared in the 1983 epic miniseries The Thorn Birds, in which she played Justine O'Neill. In 1984, she starred as Helen Keller in Helen Keller: The Miracle Continues.

Winningham in Freedom (1981)<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">Winningham achieved greater fame in St. Elmo's Fire (1985) as one of the original "brat pack" alumni. Despite the film's success, she failed to cash in on her teen idol status, and returned to television in the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, Love Is Never Silent, for which she received an Emmy nomination. Another well-known and well-received performance was as a homeless young mother in the television movie God Bless the Child. Winningham finished the 1980s with two Hollywood films: the nuclear disaster drama, Miracle Mile (1988), for which she received an Independent Spirit Award nomination in 1989, and the Tom Hanks vehicle Turner & Hooch in 1989. In 1988, Winningham also starred in the Los Angeles stage production of Hurlyburly with Sean Penn and Danny Aiello.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">In the early 1990s, she returned to film for 1994's all-star Wyatt Earp and the family drama The War, both starring Kevin Costner. 1995 brought Georgia, a thoughtful character study of two sisters (Winningham and Jennifer Jason Leigh), which earned Winningham Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award nominations. Two years later, she starred opposite Gary Sinise in George Wallace, for which she garnered her first Golden Globe Award nomination and won an Emmy Award.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">She made acclaimed appearances on the series ER and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as well as appearances in the 2001 television project Sally Hemmings opposite Sam Neill and the short-lived David E. Kelley series The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire. Also in 2001, she appeared in the made for TV movie Snap Decision with Felicity Huffman. She also appeared in the independent film Dandelion, which was a staple of film festivals worldwide between 2003 and 2004 and had a limited American release in October 2005.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">In 2006, she landed the role of Susan Grey on the ABC drama Grey's Anatomy where she played the stepmother of one of the main characters, Dr. Meredith Grey. Her character was killed off in May 2007. In 2006, Winningham voiced the audio version of Stephen King's Lisey's Story. In 2007, she voiced Alice Hoffman's Skylight Confessions. In 2010, Winningham starred in an episode of Cold Case as main character Lilly Rush's stepmother, Celeste Cooper. In 2011 she appeared in the fourth episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day as character Ellis Hartley Monroe. She also starred in miniseries Mildred Pierce and Hatfields & McCoys and garnered two another Emmy nominations. In 2012, she appeared off Broadway as Beth, the mother in an intellectual, though dysfunctional, British family, in the award-winning comic-drama Tribes by Nina Raine. ===Music<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;">[edit] === <p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">Winningham has recorded three albums: What Might Be (1992) on the Bay Cities label, Lonesomers (1998) produced by Carla Olson on the Razor and Tie label, and Refuge Rock Sublime (2007) on the Craig & Co. label. Lonesomersis a folksy album dealing with relationship issues. The country/bluegrass/Jewish/folk songs on Refuge Rock Sublime deal mostly with her recent conversion to Judaism, and include the tracks, "What Would David Do," "A Convert Jig" and the Israeli national anthem "Hatikva". She also sings on the soundtrack of Georgia. ==Personal life<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;">[edit] == <p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">Winningham was raised a Roman Catholic. In November 2001, on a friend's recommendation, she took a class given by Rabbi Neal Weinberg at the University of Judaism (now the American Jewish University) in Los Angeles, California. On March 3, 2003, she converted to Judaism.