Patricia Clarkson
On receiving the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film, Patricia Clarkson added one of the more prominent honors of her career to a body of work that had already stretched across film, stage, and television.
Born Patricia Davies Clarkson on December 29, 1959, in New Orleans, she pursued her education in the performing arts at two institutions: Fordham University and, subsequently, the Yale School of Drama. That formal training laid the groundwork for a career that would take her into three distinct areas of performance.
Clarkson has worked as a film actor, a stage actor, and a television actor, moving across all three rather than settling into one. The awards she has received reflect that range. In addition to her Golden Globe, she earned the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series and a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, two further recognitions that came from different corners of the industry.
Those three awards — the Golden Globe, the Primetime Emmy, and the Saturn Award — offer a concrete measure of the ground Clarkson has covered as a performer. The Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, in particular, sits alongside her television and film honors to suggest a career that has drawn attention from multiple awards bodies across different areas of the industry.
Quotes by Patricia Clarkson
Patricia Clarkson's insights on:
Parts that are desexed, matronly - to just put me in a couple of scenes and have me be the older, you know, dead character, is not gonna fly with me.
The odds of having films made which star women... Everyone still references one movie: 'Bridesmaids!'
There are still so many movies made starring 50 men and one woman! A white male actor should never be allowed to complain about anything. Shut up and sit in the corner. I mean, seriously!
When I was younger, of course I had people act inappropriately to me. I've had certain directors yell at me. But I didn't stand for it, and I didn't let it go far enough for it to be in any way abusive to me.
These archetypal older women in movies can sometimes make my skin crawl. It's about the one dimension; it's about the lack of any texture.
Being married and having a child was not something I wanted, and I knew that at a very young age. I tend to be more solitary, and I'm truly a free spirit.
The majority of work I do is in independent films, where you’re lucky if you have five takes.
