Early life & 1980s
Parker was born in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Her mother was Swedish and her father was a judge and served in the U.S. Army.[1][2] Parker majored in drama at the North Carolina School of the Arts. She then got her start in a bit part on the soap opera Ryan's Hope. In the late 1980s, Parker moved to New York, where she got a job measuring feet at ECCO. After a few minor roles, she made her Broadway debut in a 1990 production of Craig Lucas' Prelude to a Kiss, playing the lead role of Rita. She won the Clarence Derwent Award for her performance and was nominated for a Tony Award. Parker also briefly dated her co-star Timothy Hutton during this time.
That same year, Parker was noticed by critics when she appeared in the movie adaptation of another Lucas play, Longtime Companion, one of the first movies to confront AIDS in the public arena. This role was followed by her appearance in 1991's Grand Canyon, which also starred Mary McDonnell, Alfre Woodard and Kevin Kline. Parker's next film was Fried Green Tomatoes, alongside Jessica Tandy, Mary Stuart Masterson, Kathy Bates and Cicely Tyson.
1990s
Parker maintained a strong theater presence in the early 1990s, but also built her reputation on the big screen, starring with Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones in The Client (1994); with John Cusack in Bullets Over Broadway (1994); and with Drew Barrymore and Whoopi Goldberg in Boys on the Side (1995), as a woman with AIDS. Her next role was in a movie adaptation of yet another Craig Lucas play, Reckless (1995), alongside Mia Farrow, followed by Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady (1996), which also starred Nicole Kidman, Viggo Mortensen, Christian Bale, John Malkovich and Barbara Hershey. In addition, she appeared alongside Matthew Modine in Tim Hunter's The Maker (1997).
Parker's theater career continued when she appeared in Paula Vogel's 1997 critical smash How I Learned To Drive, with David Morse. After several independent film releases, she appeared in Let The Devil Wear Black and then a much-lauded[citation needed] role in The Five Senses (1999).
2001 – 2003
In 2001, Parker appeared alongside Larry Bryggman in David Auburn's Proof on Broadway, for which she won a Tony Award. However, Parker again lost out when the play was made into a film and the role was given to Gwyneth Paltrow. During this period, she left the theater for three years to look for other roles: among them, Red Dragon and Pipe Dream (2002).
Next was a guest role on the NBC drama, The West Wing, as women's rights activist Amelia "Amy" Gardner, which soon became a recurring role. Beginning in 2001, her character became Chief of Staff to the First Lady, and became a love interest for Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Lyman. For this role, Parker was nominated for both an Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. During the fifth season, however, Parker became pregnant and her character was written out of the series after appearing in four episodes.
On December 7, 2003, HBO aired an epic six-and-a-half hour adaptation of Tony Kushner's acclaimed Broadway play Angels in America, directed by Mike Nichols. The miniseries — about a group of lost souls in New York during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s — was hailed with international critical acclaim. Parker played Harper Pitt, the Mormon Valium-addicted wife of a closeted lawyer. For her performance, Parker received Golden Globe and Emmy awards for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries.
2004 – 2006
In 2004, Parker appeared in the comedy Saved!, and a TV movie called Miracle Run, based on the true story of a mother of two sons with autism, as well as appearing in Craig Lucas' Reckless on Broadway. Parker took the lead role that had been Mia Farrow's on screen. The production, directed by Mark Brokaw, earned Parker another nomination for a Tony Award for Best Actress in 2005.
Parker returned to The West Wing in several guest appearances in 2005 and 2006, the show's final season, portraying the Director of Legislative Affairs under the President-elect Matt Santos. She also starred with Tom Skerritt in the CBS television film Vinegar Hill as a down-on-her-luck schoolteacher who, with her family, moves in with her in-laws only to discover their bitter, loveless relationship.
In 2005, Parker took on the lead role in the television series Weeds, a Showtime comedy-drama. Parker's character, Nancy Botwin, is a suburban mother who, following the death of her husband, decides to sell marijuana to make money, while also attempting to maintain her community reputation. She stars alongside Kevin Nealon, Elizabeth Perkins, her Saved! co-star Martin Donovan, and her Angels in America co-star Justin Kirk. The show's first season aired in 2005, with the second airing in 2006, and the third airing in 2007. As of November 2007, a fourth season has been picked up.
In November 2005, Parker was honored with an exhibition of her career at Boston University, where memorabilia from her career were donated to the University's library. Parker received the 2006 Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy, given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, for her lead role in Weeds. In that category, she defeated the four leads of Desperate Housewives. She dedicated the award to the late John Spencer, best known for his work as Leo McGarry on The West Wing. After receiving the award, Parker stated: "I'm really in favor of legalizing marijuana. I don't think it's that controversial."
