Joan Allen
Birthday:
Birthplace:
Rochelle, Illinois, USA
Largely underappreciated for years in Hollywood before her Oscar-nominated turn as the First Lady in Nixon (1995), Joan Allen has had a distinguished career encompassing the stage, screen, and television. A native of Rochelle, Illinois, where she was born August 20, 1956, the blond, swanlike actress developed an interest in acting while in high school. Voted Most Likely to Succeed by her senior class, Allen went on to study theatre at Eastern Illinois University. She then moved to Chicago, where she became one of the founding members of the vaunted Steppenwolf Theatre Company, along with such respected talents as Gary Sinise and John Malkovich.Allen made her screen debut with a small role in the 1985 film Compromising Positions and a year later played two wildly different characters in Manhunter and Peggy Sue Got Married. Her portrayals of a tragically confused young woman who attempts to seduce a serial killer in the former film and a brainy high school student in the latter impressed a number of critics, but it was on the stage that Allen was most appreciated. In 1988, she won a Tony award for her Broadway debut performance in Burn This, and a year later she earned her second Tony nomination for her role in Wendy Wasserstein's highly acclaimed The Heidi Chronicles.Following increasingly substantial roles in such films as In Country (1989), Ethan Frome (1992), and Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), Allen won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her stunning portrayal of First Lady Pat Nixon in Oliver Stone's Nixon. The acclaim surrounding her performance in the 1995 film finally gave Allen the Hollywood recognition she deserved; the following year this recognition was further enhanced with her Oscar-nominated turn as the long-suffering Elizabeth Proctor in Nicholas Hytner's adaptation of The Crucible.More praise came Allen's way in 1997, when she headlined a stellar ensemble cast in Ang Lee's lauded adaptation of Rick Moody's The Ice Storm. Starring as a troubled upper middle-class Connecticut housewife alongside the likes of Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Christina Ricci, and Tobey Maguire, Allen gave repression a stirring, beautifully nuanced name. That same year she went in a completely different direction, starring as the wife of an FBI agent (John Travolta) in John Woo's popular action thriller Face/Off. Allen returned to the realm of the repressed housewife in 1998, starring (and reuniting with Maguire) in the acclaimed 1950s-set comedy drama Pleasantville. The turn of the century found Allen taking leads in a trio of issue-oriented dramas: In the multi-character handgun treatise All the Rage (released on video in 2000), she played the wife of a short-fused lawyer (reuniting with Pleasantville's Jeff Daniels in the process); in the Irish production When the Sky Falls, she teamed with The Long Good Friday (1980) director John Mackenzie to tell the true, tragic story of a Dublin crime reporter; and in Rod Lurie's The Contender, Allen nabbed her biggest role to date -- and her first Best Actress Oscar nomination -- as a would-be U.S. vice president who finds herself at the center of a sex scandal.After all the attention for The Contender, the savvy Allen continued to oscillate between big roles in low-profile independent films and small roles in big-budget popcorn fare, to even greater success. She featured prominently in two of the biggest box-office hits of 2004: the sentimental romance The Notebook and the wildly successful second installment of the Jason Bourne franchise, The Bourne Supremacy. In the latter, she dug into a meaty, sympathetic supporting role as an all-business CIA agent who pursues the framed title character. Spring 2005 saw the near-concurrent release of two of her indie films, both of which premiered at Sundance Festivals from years prior: Campbell Scott's lapsed-hippie family drama Off the Map and Mike Binder's Terms of Endearment-ish saga The Upside of Anger. The former cast Allen against
Photos
Highest Rated Movies
Filmography
MOVIES
RATING | TITLE | CREDIT | BOX OFFICE | YEAR |
---|---|---|---|---|
No Score Yet | Chi scriverà la nostra storia |
|
— | 2018 |
93% | Room |
|
$14.7M | 2015 |
32% | Stephen King's A Good Marriage |
|
— | 2014 |
No Score Yet | Rickover: The Birth of Nuclear Power |
|
— | 2014 |
55% | The Bourne Legacy |
|
$113.2M | 2012 |
No Score Yet | So You Want To Be President? |
|
— | 2010 |
No Score Yet | Waking The T.rex 3d: The Story Of Sue |
|
— | 2010 |
No Score Yet | Waking the T. Rex: The Story of SUE |
|
— | 2010 |
64% | Hachi: A Dog's Tale |
|
— | 2009 |
No Score Yet | Georgia O'Keeffe |
|
— | 2009 |
68% | Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh |
|
— | 2009 |
No Score Yet | Good Sharma |
|
— | 2009 |
No Score Yet | Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City |
|
— | 2009 |
42% | Death Race |
|
$36.1M | 2008 |
82% | The Rape of Europa |
|
— | 2007 |
84% | Trumbo |
|
$28.6k | 2007 |
92% | The Bourne Ultimatum |
|
$227.4M | 2007 |
41% | Bonneville |
|
$0.4M | 2006 |
52% | Yes |
|
$0.3M | 2005 |
75% | The Upside of Anger |
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$18.8M | 2005 |
82% | The Bourne Supremacy |
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$176.1M | 2004 |
53% | The Notebook |
|
$81M | 2004 |
70% | Off the Map |
|
$1.3M | 2003 |
45% | The Mists of Avalon |
|
— | 2001 |
76% | The Contender |
|
$16.2M | 2000 |
20% | When the Sky Falls |
|
— | 2000 |
27% | It's the Rage |
|
— | 2000 |
85% | Pleasantville |
|
— | 1998 |
85% | The Ice Storm |
|
— | 1997 |
92% | Face/Off |
|
— | 1997 |
68% | The Crucible |
|
— | 1996 |
75% | Nixon |
|
— | 1995 |
28% | Mad Love |
|
— | 1995 |
100% | Searching for Bobby Fischer |
|
— | 1993 |
55% | Ethan Frome |
|
— | 1993 |
25% | Josh and S.A.M. |
|
— | 1993 |
No Score Yet | Without Warning: The James Brady Story |
|
— | 1991 |
68% | In Country |
|
— | 1989 |
83% | Tucker: The Man and His Dream |
|
— | 1988 |
No Score Yet | The Room Upstairs |
|
— | 1987 |
86% | Peggy Sue Got Married |
|
— | 1986 |
No Score Yet | Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid |
|
— | 1986 |
93% | Manhunter |
|
— | 1986 |
No Score Yet | American Playhouse |
|
— | 1986 |
56% | Compromising Positions |
|
— | 1985 |
TV
RATING | TITLE | CREDIT | YEAR |
---|---|---|---|
61% |
The Family
2015-2016
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
Charlie Rose
2013-2017
|
|
|
68% |
The Killing
2011-2014
|
|
|
82% |
Luck
2011-2012
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
Independent Lens
1999
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
Late Night With Jimmy Fallon
2009-2014
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
Rachael Ray
2006
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
The Tonight Show With Jay Leno
1992-2014
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
American Experience
1988
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
Saturday Night Live
1975
|
|
|
93% |
Frasier
1993-2004
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
American Playhouse
1982-1996
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
The Fugitive
1963-1967
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
Lisey's Story
2021
|
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Quotes from Joan Allen's Characters
Grandma: | Hello, Jack. Thanks for saving our little girl. |
Jack: | I love you, Grandma. |
Grandma: | I love you too, Jack. |
Cate Wilson: | It's been a while. |
Ken: | It certainly has. |
Cate Wilson: | It's ten years. Can you believe it? |
Anne Hamilton: | She is foolin' around with that boy until two o'clock in the mornin' and it has gotta stop! I didn't spent seventeen years raisin' a daughter and givin' her EVERYTHING, so she could throw it away on a summer romance! |
Allie Calhoun: | (screaming) DADDY! |
Anne Hamilton: | She will wind up with her heart broken or pregnant! Now he's a nice boy, but he's... |
Allie Calhoun: | He's WHAT? He is what? Tell me! |
Anne Hamilton: | He is trash! Trash! Trash! Not for you! |
Anne Hamilton: | Because I might know you a little better than you think. And I don't want you wakin' up one mornin' thinkin' if you'd known everything you might have done somethin' different. |
Allie Calhoun: | What's goin' on? |
Anne Hamilton: | We're goin' home. |
Allie Calhoun: | We're leavin' now? |
Anne Hamilton: | Mm-hmm. |
Allie Calhoun: | We're not supposed to leavin' for another week. |
Anne Hamilton: | Get dressed, come downstairs and have some breakfast. Willa will pack your things. |
Willa: | Why, I'd be happy to pack your things, Miss Allie. |
Allie Calhoun: | No, I don't want you to pack my things, don't want you to touch my stuff, I'm not goin'! |
Anne Hamilton: | Yes, you are. |
Sen. Laine Hanson: | Principles only mean something if you stick by them when they are inconvenient. |
Pamela Landy: | Pamela Landy |
Pamela Landy: | Pamela Landy. |
David Webb/Jason Bourne: | I hear you"re still looking for me |
David Webb/Jason Bourne: | I hear you're still looking for me. |
George: | "So, what's going to happen now?" |
George: | So, what's going to happen now? |
Betty: | "I don't know. Do you know what's going to happen now?" |
Betty: | I don't know. Do you know what's going to happen now? |
George: | Laughs, then says, "I don't." |
George: | [laughs] I don't. |
Mr. Johnson: | "I guess I don't either." |
Mr. Johnson: | I guess I don't either. |
Pamela Landy: | How do I find her? |
David Webb/Jason Bourne: | It's easy. She's standing right next to you. |
Ken: | Ronnie - 11 years: Where did Grandpa find Hachi? |
Cate Wilson: | Ronnie, actually, Hachi found your grandfather. |
Pam Landy: | This is Jason Bourne, the toughest target that you have ever tracked. He is really good at staying alive, and trying to kill him and failing... just pisses him off. |