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Academy Award-winning and Emmy nominated actress Marcia Gay Harden has forged an incomparable body of work, and like a chameleon she transforms into each character she plays. Her critically lauded performances are myriad – from glamorous Ava Gardner in Sinatra, to artist Lee Krasner in Pollock (winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress), to the down-and-out Celeste in Mystic River (Oscar-nominated in the same category) – and her versatility has been praised in other films such as Miller’s Crossing,_ The First Wives Club_,_ Meet Joe Black_,_ Mona Lisa Smile_,_ The Hoax_ and Used People. She most recently earned an Emmy nomination for Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her recurring role on the Golden Globe-nominated series The Morning Show on Apple+ opposite Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon.
 
Harden currently stars in the mother/son dramedy So Help Me Todd with Skylar Astin on CBS. She also recently starred in Netflix's comedy series, co-created by Darren Star and Jeffrey Richman, Uncoupled, opposite Neil Patrick Harris.
 
On the film side, Harden will next be seen in the MarVista and Particular Crowd’s co-production of the family comedy, Daughter of the Bride. The film also stars Halston Sage from Fox’s Prodigal Son. The film follows the two as a mother-daughter duo who are inseparable, yet their lives are turned upside down when one announces her engagement to a mystery man. She also recently appeared in Roadside’s Gigi & Nate with Jim Belushi, Josephine Langford and Charlie Rowe, as well as, Greg Mattola’s Confess, Fletch opposite Jon Hamm.
            
Harden also starred in NatGeo’s upcoming drama _Barkskins, _based on the New York Times best-selling novel by Pulitzer Prize-winner Annie Proulx. The series focuses on indentured servants transported from the Paris slums to the wilds of New France in the late 17th century. Harden plays ‘Mathilde Geffard,’ an innkeeper and burgeoning power player in town who knows everyone’s secrets and takes in a mysterious girl left orphaned by the settlement massacre. 
  
She also starred in Netflix’s upcoming Amy Poehler-directed comedy Moxie, alongside Ike Barinholtz, Clark Gregg and Josephine Langford, and writer/director Kelly Oxford’s drama _Pink Skies Ahead, _opposite Henry Winkler, Jessica Barden and Rosa Salazar.
 
 In 2019 Harden starred in the Lifetime telefilm Love You To Death, a psychologically-tinged drama inspired by the true story of the murder of Dee Dee Blanchard, and Netflix’s Point Blank, an action thriller co-starring Frank Grillo and Anthony Mackie about a nurse who saves the life of a criminal and must help plan the patient’s escape in order to save his kidnapped wife. 
 
Recently concluding a three-season run as Dr. Leanne Rorish in the CBS drama Code Black, for which she was nominated for a People's Choice Award as Favorite Actress in a New TV Series, Harden also had a memorable arc on ABC’s hit drama How To Get Away With Murder.  Past television appearances include Elsa & Fred with Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer; the ABC comedy series Trophy Wife, which starred Malin Ackerman, Bradley Whitford and Michaela Watkins; Lifetime’s The Amanda Knox Story, playing Amanda’s mother Edda Mellas opposite Hayden Panettiere; the critically acclaimed FX drama _Damages _opposite William Hurt and Glenn Close; and as First Amendment attorney Rebecca Halliday in a critically acclaimed guest star role on Aaron Sorkin’s former HBO series _The Newsroom. _In 2009, she was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for her role in The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. She also received an Emmy nomination for her guest appearance on Law and Order: SVU in 2007. 
 
On the big screen she reprised her role as Christian Grey’s mother in Universal’s _Fifty Shades Freed _in 2018, following Fifty Shades of Grey and Fifty Shades Darker, the trilogy grossing over $1.3 billion worldwide. Notable past films include the Paul Weitz comedy Grandma, starring alongside Lily Tomlin; After Words, a romantic adventure shot on location in Costa Rica; _Parkland, _with Billy Bob Thornton, Paul Giamatti and Ron Livingston; If I Were You, co-starring Aidan Quinn; Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, with Peter Gallagher and Ellen Burstyn; Detachment, co-starring Adrien Brody, Christina Hendricks and Lucy Liu; _American Gun _with Forest Whitaker, which earned her an Independent Spirit Award nomination; Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut _Whip It _with Ellen Page, in which her daughter Eulala Scheel also had a co-starring role; Frank Darabont’s _The Mist; _Sean Penn’s Into the Wild; Richard Linklater’s Bad News Bears with Billy Bob Thornton and Greg Kinnear; Mike Newell’s Mona Lisa Smile with Julia Roberts and Kirsten Dunst; Clint Eastwood’s Academy Award-nominated Mystic River with Sean Penn and Tim Robbins; _Meet Joe Black _with Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins; _The First Wives Club _with Diane Keaton, Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn; _The Christmas Cottage _with Peter O’Toole; and Joel Coen’s _Miller’s Crossing. _
 
Adding author to her professional oeuvre, Harden saw the publication of The Seasons of My Mother, A Memoir of Love, Family, and Flowers (Atria/Simon & Schuster) in 2018. It is a poignant personal story which Publishers Weekly called a “graceful memoir.”
 
Harden has chosen a life away from mainstream Hollywood, moving between independent and studio films, and between television and theatre. In 2011 she reprised the role she originated on Broadway in the Tony Award-winning play God of Carnage alongside the original cast with a tremendously successful stage run at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles. In 2009, it was her exceptional Broadway performance in this starring role that earned a Best Actress Tony Award. Her fellow-nominated stars in the play included James Gandolfini, Hope Davis and Jeff Daniels. Harden also received an Outer Circle Critics Award for her performance, as well as nominations from the Drama Desk and Drama League. She also received a Tony nomination for Angels in America (for which she won the Drama Desk and Theatre World Awards). In the Summer of 2017, she made her UK theatre debut starring at Alexandra in the Chichester Theatre Festival’s production of Sweet Bird of Youth.
                                    
Harden graduated from the University of Texas with a B.A. in Theatre and an MFA from the Graduate Acting program at New York University.