Frances McDormand was born in Chicago in 1957, and was adopted by Canadian minister Vernan McDormand and his wife Noreen, who raised her in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. She earned her B.A. in Theater from Bethany College in 1979 and her MFA from Yale in 1982.

Her career after graduation began onstage, and she has retained her association with the theater throughout her career. She soon obtained prominent roles in movies as well, first starring in Blood Simple., in which she worked with filmmaker Joel Coen, whom she married that year. She frequently collaborated with Coen and his brother Ethan Coen in their films.

McDormand's skilled and versatile acting has been recognized by both the critics and the Academy, and in addition to many critics' awards she has been nominated for an Academy award four times - for Mississippi Burning, Fargo (for which she won the Best Actress award), Almost Famous, and North Country.

Keenly intelligent and possessed of a sharp wit, McDormand is the antithesis of the Hollywood starlet - rather than making every role about Frances McDormand, Frances McDormand dissolves into the characters she plays. Accordingly, she has expressed some reservations about the iconic recognition she has gained from her touching and amusing portrayal of Police Chief Marge Gunderson, the quintessential Minnesota Scandinavian, in "Fargo."

McDormand and Coen adopted a son, Pedro, who was born in Paraguay, in 1994. They live in Manhattan.



Has one son, Pedro McDormand Coen, adopted from Paraguay in 1994 Was the third and youngest child adopted by her minister father Vernon and his wife, Noreen. Sister-in-law of Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke. She attended Bethany College, Bethany, West Virginia and received her B.A. in Theater, 1979. Then she attended Yale University School of Drama, New Haven, Connecticut and received her M.F.A., 1982. Her Oscar-winning role, as Marge Gunderson from her 1996 film Fargo (1996), was ranked #33 in the American Film Institute's Heroes list in their 100 years of The Greatest Screen Heroes and Villains. Was listed as a potential nominee on the 2006 Razzie Award nominating ballot. She was listed as a suggestion in the Worst Supporting Actress category for her performance in the film Æon Flux (2005). However, she failed to receive a nomination. (Had she gotten the nomination, she would have been one of the few to be nominated for both Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars, for North Country (2005), and Worst Supporting Actress at the Razzies in the same year.) As of 2007, six women have received Best Actress nominations for performances directed by their spouse - Frances is the only one to actually win. The other five are Gena Rowlands for A Woman Under the Influence (1974) & Gloria (1980), Joanne Woodward for Rachel, Rachel (1968), Julie Andrews for Victor Victoria (1982), Elisabeth Bergner for Escape Me Never (1935) and Jean Simmons for The Happy Ending (1969). Jules Dassin also directed his future wife Melina Mercouri in an Oscar-nominated performance (Pote tin Kyriaki (1960)), but they weren't married yet at the time of the nomination. Shared an apartment in the Bronx with Holly Hunter in the early '80s until they moved in with Joel Coen, Ethan Coen and Sam Raimi into a house in LA.