Mare Winningham

Mary Megan Winningham, known professionally as Mare Winningham (born May 16, 1959), is an American actress and singer-songwriter.

She is the recipient of two Primetime Emmy Awards and has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards and two Tony Awards.

In 1976 and 1977, she got her break singing The Beatles song "Here, There and Everywhere" on The Gong Show.

Although Winningham received no record contracts as result of the appearance, she was signed to an acting contract by Hollywood agent Meyer Mishkin, and received her Screen Actor's Guild card for doing three lines in an episode of James at 15.

She graduated co-valedictorian (with Spacey) of her high school class in 1977.

Winningham began her career as a singer-songwriter.

That year she was offered a role on Young Pioneers and Young Pioneers Christmas, pilots for the short-lived 1978 drama The Young Pioneers.

Though the series ended with just three episodes being broadcast, a number of television projects followed, including parts on Police Woman in 1978 and Starsky and Hutch in 1979.

Later that same year, she played the role of teenage outcast Jenny Flowers in the made-for-TV film The Death of Ocean View Park.

An eight-time Emmy Award nominee, she won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for Amber Waves in 1980 and George Wallace in 1998.

In 1980, Winningham starred in Off the Minnesota Strip playing a young prostitute.

She then won an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her role in the critically acclaimed Amber Waves, a television film about a rough farmer (Dennis Weaver) who finds he is dying of cancer.

In that year, she also broke into feature films with One Trick Pony, starring Paul Simon.

Winningham finished the 1980s with two Hollywood films: the nuclear disaster drama, Miracle Mile (1988), for which she received an Independent Spirit Award nomination in 1989, and the Tom Hanks vehicle Turner & Hooch in 1989.

Winningham's other film and TV roles include The Thornbirds (1983), St. Elmo's Fire (1985), Miracle Mile (1988), Turner & Hooch (1989), The War (1994), Dandelion (2004), Swing Vote (2008), Brothers (2009), Mildred Pierce (2011), Hatfields & McCoys (2012) and appeared in American Horror Story for four seasons: Coven (2013), Freak Show (2014), Hotel (2015–16) and Cult (2017).

In 1983, Winningham was nominated for a Canadian Genie Award for her work in the futuristic 1981 drama Threshold, and appeared in the 1983 epic miniseries The Thorn Birds, in which she played Justine O'Neill.

In 1984, she starred as Helen Keller in Helen Keller: The Miracle Continues.

Winningham achieved greater fame co-starring in St. Elmo's Fire (1985), alongside the other original "brat pack" alumni.

Despite the film's success, she failed to cash in on her teen idol status, and returned to television in the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, Love Is Never Silent, for which she received an Emmy nomination.

Another well-known and well-received performance was as a homeless young mother in the television movie God Bless the Child.

In 1988, Winningham also starred in the Los Angeles stage production of Hurlyburly with Sean Penn and Danny Aiello.

In the early 1990s, she returned to film for 1994's all-star Wyatt Earp and the family drama The War, both starring Kevin Costner.

She was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 1995 film Georgia.

1995 brought Georgia, a thoughtful character study of two sisters (Winningham and Jennifer Jason Leigh), which earned Winningham Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award nominations.

Two years later, she starred opposite Gary Sinise in George Wallace, for which she garnered her Golden Globe Award nomination and won an Emmy Award.

She made her New York stage debut in the 2007 Off-Broadway musical 10 Million Miles, for which she received a Drama Desk Award nomination.

She made her Broadway debut in the 2013 revival of Picnic.

In 2014, she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for the original Broadway production of Casa Valentina.

She was cast as Cherry Lockhart for Seasons 1–2 and 4 as Cole's mother in the TV series The Affair.

Winningham was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and raised in Northridge, California.

She is the daughter of Marilyn Jean (née Maloney) and Sam Neal Winningham.

She has three brothers and one sister.

Her father was football coach, athletic director and later the chairman of the Department of Physical Education at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), and her mother was an English teacher and college counselor at Monroe High School and Grant High School.

She credits her first interest in acting to seeing an interview with Kym Karath (who played Gretl in The Sound of Music) on Art Linkletter's television show House Party when she was five or six years old.

Winningham attended Andasol Avenue Elementary School, where her favorite activities included drama and playing the guitar and drums.

She took the extended drama option at Patrick Henry Junior High School and continued to study over her summer vacations at CSUN's Teenage Drama Workshop.

It was at this time that she adopted the nickname "Mare".

Her mother arranged for her to go to Chatsworth High School.

In grade 12, Winningham starred in a production of The Sound of Music, playing the part of Maria, opposite classmate Kevin Spacey as Captain Von Trapp.

Her high school boyfriend was Val Kilmer.