Detailed Biography

Patricia Davies Clarkson is an American actress. After having a dramatic education on the East Coast, Clarkson launched her acting career in 1985, and is working steadily in both film and television. She won the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in Six Feet Under, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Pieces of April .

Early life

Clarkson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Jacquelyn , a prominent local New Orleans politician and councilwoman, and Arthur, a school administrator who worked at the Department of Medicine of Louisiana State University. Clarkson's great-grandfather was from Barcelona, Spain. Clarkson studied drama at Fordham University, where she graduated summa cum laude, and earned her MFA at the Yale School of Drama before making her film debut in The Untouchables in 1987. In 1974 Clarkson received her first starring role in the play The Crucible at her high school O.P. Walker in New Orleans, La. Her senior class director, Barbara Pusateri, singled her out as the star of the future in films.

Career

Clarkson's Broadway theatre credits include The House of Blue Leaves and Eastern Standard.

Clarkson had supporting roles in a series of high-profile films in her early career, including The Dead Pool, Rocket Gibraltar and Everybody's All-American. She starred in the short-run television series Davis Rules, and in the miniseries Alex Haley's Queen. More often a character actor than a leading woman, she has also appeared in such major films as The Green Mile , Far from Heaven and Good Night, and Good Luck .

In 2002, she originated her role as Sarah O'Connor in HBO's Six Feet Under. She went on to win an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress that year for her performance, a feat she repeated for the same role in 2006.

In 2003, she gained critical acclaim and a Special Jury Prize for her work in four films that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival : All the Real Girls, The Baroness and the Pig, The Station Agent and Pieces of April. Later that year, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Pieces of April, in which she plays an acerbic mother dying of cancer.

In 2006, she portrayed Sadie Burke, in All the King's Men, set in her native New Orleans. In 2008, she had supporting roles in Elegy, as a womanizer's put-upon girlfriend, and Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona as an unhappily married housewife.

Clarkson returned to New Orleans for 2009 January 17 reopening of the Mahalia Jackson Theatre for the Performing Arts. She served as Master of Ceremonies for a gala celebration featuring Plácido Domingo in concert with the New Orleans Opera directed by Robert Lyall. She also made a cameo appearance in the Saturday Night Live Digital Short "Motherlover" on May 9, 2009. The video featured Andy Samberg, Justin Timberlake, and Susan Sarandon.