YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT
FRANCES McDORMAND
POWERHOUSE performances are the trademark of Frances McDormand, who’s racked up six Oscar nominations for playing quirky, headstrong characters. She’s most recently received critical acclaim for her turn in Nomadland — director Chloé Zhao’s movie about roving laborers who live in RVs, trailers and vans. Here are ten things you don’t know about the 63-year-old actress.
1 She was born Cynthia Ann Smith in 1957 — but her name was changed to Frances Louise after her adoption by Noreen and Vernon
McDormand.
2 Her first taste of drama came at age 14, when she played
Lady Macbeth during a performance at her Pennsylvania high school.
She attended Bethany College in West Virginia on scholarship, and at the time, she was the school’s only theater major.
While attempting to launch her career as an actress in New
York City, she shared an apartment with Holly Hunter — a fellow alum from the Yale School of Drama. “Fran’s as fabulous as she seems,” says the Broadcast News star.
5 Through Holly’s recommendation, Frances got a role in Joel and Ethan Coen’s first film,
Blood Simple.
6 She says Joel “seduced” her by recommending hardboiled fiction books by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain — and the couple married in 1984.
7 For her Academy Award–winning turn as pregnant cop Marge Gunderson in Fargo, she wore a prosthetic belly filled with birdseed and says, “It had a real weight to it.
It completely informed the way I moved.”
8 She says strangers regularly shout out Marge’s catchphrase “You betcha!” when they see her on the street.
9 She considers herself a “character actress — plain and simple.”
10 She is adamant about embracing her age — and avoiding plastic surgery — and says, “A friend told me there are three stages of a woman’s life — maid, mother, crone. Crone has been taken away from us, and I want it back.”