Mary McDonnell

Acting

Mary McDonnell

Born 1952-04-28 · Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, USA

Mary Eileen McDonnell (born April 28, 1952) is an American film, stage, and television actress. She received Academy Award nominations for her roles as Stands With A Fist in Dances With Wolves and May-Alice Culhane in Passion Fish. McDonnell is well known for her performances as President Laura Roslin in Battlestar Galactica, First Lady Marilyn Whitmore in Independence Day, and Rose in Donnie Darko. She was featured as Captain Sharon Raydor during seasons 5–7 of the TNT series The Closer and starred as Commander Sharon Raydor in the spin-off series Major Crimes on the same network. In 2023, she played Madeleine Usher in the miniseries The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix. Description above from the Wikipedia article Mary McDonnell, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Acting credits

Independence Day poster
6.9

Strange phenomena surface around the globe. The skies ignite. Terror races through the world's major cities. As these extraordinary events unfold, it becomes increasingly clear that a force of incredible magnitude has arrived. Its mission: total annihilation over the Fourth of July weekend. The last hope to stop the destruction is an unlikely group of people united by fate and unimaginable circumstances.

Independence Day

1996

Dances with Wolves poster
7.8

Wounded Civil War soldier John Dunbar tries to commit suicide—and becomes a hero instead. As a reward, he's assigned to his dream post, a remote junction on the Western frontier, and soon makes unlikely friends with the local Sioux tribe.

Dances with Wolves

1990

Donnie Darko poster
7.8

After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.

Donnie Darko

2001

Scream 4 poster
6.5

Fifteen years after the original Woodsboro murders, Sidney Prescott returns home to promote her new book about surviving trauma, only for a new Ghostface killer to emerge, targeting a new group of teens.

Scream 4

2011

Margin Call poster
6.9

Set in the high-stakes world of the financial industry, involving the key players at an investment firm during one perilous 24-hour period in the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis. An entry-level analyst unlocks information that could prove to be the downfall of the firm.

Margin Call

2011

Sneakers poster
6.9

When shadowy U.S. intelligence agents blackmail a reformed computer hacker and his eccentric team of security experts into stealing a code-breaking 'black box' from a Soviet-funded genius, they uncover a bigger conspiracy. Now, he and his 'sneakers' must save themselves and the world economy by retrieving the box from their blackmailers.

Sneakers

1992

12 Angry Men poster
7.7

During the trial of a man accused of his father's murder, a lone juror takes a stand against the guilty verdict handed down by the others as a result of their preconceptions and prejudices.

12 Angry Men

1997

Battlestar Galactica: Razor poster
7.2

The history and adventures of the Battlestar Pegasus, from shortly before the Cylon invasion to shortly after Lee Adama is made commander. The story is told through the eyes of and largely focuses on one particular member of Pegasus's crew, Kendra Shaw.

Battlestar Galactica: Razor

2007

Broke poster
7.1

A bronc rider in denial about his fading rodeo career battles against brain injury and a sudden blizzard while reflecting on how it became so difficult to achieve his dreams.

Broke

2025

The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf poster
7.4

Escaping from poverty to become a witcher, Vesemir slays monsters for coin and glory, but when a new menace rises, he must face the demons of his past.

The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf

2021

Blue Chips poster
6.1

Pete Bell, a college basketball coach is under a lot of pressure. His team isn't winning and he cannot attract new players. The stars of the future are secretly being paid by boosters. This practice is forbidden in the college game, but Pete is desperate and has pressures from all around.

Blue Chips

1994

Matewan poster
7.4

Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe Kenehan, a scab named "Few Clothes" Johnson and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the power represented by a coal company and Matewan's vested interests so that justice and workers' rights need not take a back seat to squalid working conditions, exploitation and the bottom line.

Matewan

1987

The Making of 'Independence Day' poster
6.1

We take a look at various fields of development for the motion picture, Independence Day (1996). Jeff Goldblum is our guide through 'Area ID4' (a rip-off name of Area 51). He pretends to creep around and give us "secret" information about the film. There is also interviews with the cast and crew, and some other behind the scenes stuff that is only there to impress you, and to make you want to go see the film.

The Making of 'Independence Day'

1996

Passion Fish poster
7.0

After an accident leaves her a paraplegic, a former soap opera star struggles to recover both emotionally and mentally, until she meets her newest nurse, who has struggles of her own.

Passion Fish

1992

Grand Canyon poster
6.4

Grand Canyon revolved around six residents from different backgrounds whose lives intertwine in modern-day Los Angeles. At the center of the film is the unlikely friendship of two men from different races and classes brought together when one finds himself in jeopardy in the other's rough neighborhood.

Grand Canyon

1991

Woman Undone poster
4.1

When Terri Hansen (Mary McDonnell) emerges from a fiery car crash as a widow, the local sheriff at first believes her account of the accident. But there's a snag in her story. Namely, a bullet in her dead husband. Just what did happen on that dark desert road? Through a series of telling flashbacks, we and the jury learn the bizarre truth. Randy Quaid and Sam Elliott costar in this riveting drama.

Woman Undone

1996

Garbo Talks poster
6.3

When New York accountant Gilbert Rolfe finds out his mother has a brain tumor, he is devastated. His incorrigible mother, Estelle, has one last wish: to meet the great Greta Garbo. Gilbert, wanting to do this last thing for her, sets out on a wild goose chase through the streets of New York City to track down the iconic star, at the expense of his personal life and much to the chagrin of his wife, Lisa. Can he find Garbo before it's too late?

Garbo Talks

1984

Mumford poster
6.5

When a would-be psychologist, curiously named Dr. Mumford, comes to the idyllic town of the same name and offers his talent for listening and a disarming frankness, the town's quirkiest citizens scramble for a seat on his couch. As he lightens hearts darkened by old secrets no one realizes he's hiding a whopper of his own, or that he's fallen head over heels for one of his patients!

Mumford

1999

No artwork available
8.0

In this forceful study of religious passion an extraordinary spiritual experience is placed in the center of a deftly evoked natural world, namely, rural upstate New York just after the turn of the century. At summer's end, when she is 17, Mariette Baptiste, educated daughter of the local doctor, enters the cloistered convent of Our Lady of the Afflictions as a postulant. Her religious fervor, understated but determined, makes an impact on the small community of nuns whose days and nights are measured in a round of prayer and farm work changing only with the seasons. Their ordered life is disrupted, however, as Mariette begins to fall into a series of trances from which she awakens with stigmata, which heal as spontaneously as they appear. The feelings of skepticism, jealousy and adoration evoked in the nuns, Mariette's own response and that of the Mother Superior are delicately, indelibly presented.

Mariette in Ecstasy

1996

Tiger Warsaw poster
5.5

Chuck brought sorrow to his family when he shot his father who is now a semi-invalid. After 15 years of self destruction, he returns home to seek forgiveness.

Tiger Warsaw

1988

Courage poster
6.8

A mother in Queens, New York, outraged when she discovers that her son is a drug addict, becomes an undercover agent for the DEA to clean up the drug trade in her neighborhood. Based on a true story.

Courage

1986

For All Time poster
6.4

A man facing middle-age and a failing marriage finds a time slip that can take him back to the end of the nineteenth century.

For All Time

2000

Mrs. Harris poster
5.8

Based on the sensational 1980s media event, famed cardiologist Herman Tarnower meets a particularly brutal end at the hands of his jilted lover, Jean Harris.

Mrs. Harris

2005

Hostile Makeover poster
7.4

Lacey Smithsonian is a stylish journalist who works as a television reporter. When interviewing a prestigious fashion designer Amanda Manville, it confesses that receives death threats from someone. Everything is complicated when the artist is shot dead during the program. Lacey will be involved in the case and launch an investigation to find the guilty.

Hostile Makeover

2009