Blair Brown

Blair Brown
Brown at the San Diego Comic-Con International in July 2010
Born	Bonnie Blair Brown (1947-04-23) April 23, 1947 Washington, D.C.
Education	National Theatre School of Canada
Occupation	actress

Bonnie Blair Brown (born April 23, 1947) is an American theater, film, and television actress. She has had a number of high-profile roles, including a Tony Award-winning turn in the play Copenhagen on Broadway, as well as a run as the title character in the television comedy-drama The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, which ran from 1987 to 1991.^[1] Brown is well known for her recent role as Nina Sharp in the television series Fringe, broadcast on Fox.

Personal life

Brown was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Elizabeth Ann (née Blair), a teacher, and Milton Henry Brown, a U.S. intelligence agent.^[2][3] She graduated from The Madeira School in McLean, Virginia before going on to pursue acting at the National Theatre School of Canada, graduating in 1969.^[4] She gained notice as a participating actor at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, and spent several years honing her work on the stage.^[1]

Brown had a relationship with actor Richard Jordan, whom she met while filming the miniseries Captains and the Kings in 1976. The couple lived together from 1976 to 1985; they had one son, Robert Anson Jordan III, born in 1983.^[5]

Career

Film

Brown's first feature film role was in the Oscar-winning 1973 film The Paper Chase; her first major starring role was in The Choirboys in 1977. Among her other film credits were Altered States (opposite William Hurt), One Trick Pony, the film Stealing Home (opposite Mark Harmon) and A Flash Of Green (1984). Her arguably highest profile film role to date was the romantic lead opposite John Belushi in Continental Divide (1981) for which she received her first Golden Globe Award nomination, in the category of Best Motion Picture Actress in a Comedy/Musical.

Other film roles include: And I Alone Survived (1978), Strapless (1989), The Astronaut's Wife (1999), Clint Eastwood's Space Cowboys (2000), Lars von Trier's Dogville, the Kevin Bacon-directed Loverboy (2005) and The Sentinel (2006).

Television

Brown appeared in several television movies and miniseries, primarily during the 1980s. A high-profile role as Jacqueline Kennedy in the 1983 TV miniseries Kennedy earned her a second Golden Globe nomination, for Best Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, as well as a BAFTA nomination. She also appeared in several other programs about the Kennedys, including the 1996 miniseries A Season in Purgatory, which was a thinly veiled portrait of the family, as well as an appearance as Anna Roosevelt in a telefilm about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Brown is perhaps best known for her five-year run (1987–1991) on the Emmy Award-nominated comedy-drama series The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. Brown played the title role, and she, and the show, earned a small but dedicated following. Brown received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations for each season, in the category of Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, but never won. The show spent two years on NBC, then moved to the Lifetime cable channel for the remainder of its run.

Brown also appeared in other prime-time series including The Rockford Files, Kojak, Frasier, Smallville, Touched by an Angel, ER, and Ed. Beginning in 2008, Brown starred as Nina Sharp in the Fox television series Fringe.

Stage

Brown has been involved with theater since the beginning of her career. She appeared in the 1975 New York Shakespeare Festival production of The Comedy of Errors.^[6] Among her earlier roles was a run as Lucy Brown in the 1976 production of Brecht & Weill's The Threepenny Opera, produced by Joe Papp and directed by Richard Foreman. She left the production for film work, but after being away from the production for eight months, Ellen Greene, who was playing the part of Jenny, fell ill. Brown astounded the stage manager of the production by coming in and, with one hour of rehearsal, put on a "brilliant" performance as Jenny.^[7] Her first major appearance on the Broadway came in 1989, in the play Secret Rapture, written by David Hare.

Once "Molly Dodd" concluded, Brown became a prolific Broadway actress, appearing in a number of roles. Among them were roles in Tom Stoppard's 1995 Lincoln Center Theater production of Arcadia^[8] and two separate runs as Frau Schneider in the revival of Cabaret (1998 and 2003).^[9] She played Margrethe, the wife of physicist Niels Bohr, in the play Copenhagen,^[10] a role for which she won a 2000 Tony Award in the category of Best Featured Actress in a Play.^[11] Brown played the lead role in Sarah Ruhl's 2006 play The Clean House at Lincoln Center.^[12]

Voice

In the 1990s, Brown expanded her career from performance into voiceover work. Brown has narrated a number of books, as well as being a narrator in films and documentaries. She has narrated a number of audiobooks, including John Grisham's The Client, Lois Lowry's Number the Stars, Stephen King's Rose Madder, Kevin Henkes' Olive's Ocean, Sue Miller's 2005 novel Lost in the Forest, and Isabel Allende's Inés of My Soul.

Brown has narrated numerous documentaries, especially for PBS's American Experience series. She narrated the 2007 PBS series The Mysterious Human Heart. Other documentary narrations include the scientific series The Secret Life of the Brain, a documentary on Aimee Semple McPherson, which aired in April 2007, and a 2006 PBS documentary about Marie Antoinette. In April, 2010, she co-narrated the PBS special, The Buddha, with Richard Gere.

Filmography

Films

TV series

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Blair Brown.

• Blair Brown at AllRovi
• Blair Brown at the Internet Broadway Database
• Blair Brown at the Internet Movie Database
• Performance Working in the Theatre video, by the American Theatre Wing, September 1989
• Blair Brown Downstage Center radio interview, by the American Theatre Wing, December 2006
• Leading Ladies Working in the Theatre video, by the American Theatre Wing, December 2006