Mary-Louise Parker Net Worth

What is Mary-Louise Parker's Net Worth?

Mary-Louise Parker is an American actress with a net worth of $16 million. Mary-Louise Parker has won Tony, Emmy, and Golden Globe nominations and awards. She is well-known for her recurring roles on the television series, "The West Wing" and "Weeds."

Mary-Louise Parker somehow makes quirky sexy and cool, as opposed to, well, annoying.  After getting her start on the soap opera, "Ryan's Hope" in the 80s, she gained widespread recognition for her Tony-nominated performance in "Prelude to a Kiss" on Broadway.  She then went on to appear in a string of dramatic film roles throughout the 90s, in such projects as "Fried Green Tomatoes," "Bullets Over Broadway," "Boys on the Side," "Reckless," and "The Portrait of a Lady."  In the early 2000s, she began going back and forth between independent film and television projects.  She became a household name appearing on the hit series "The West Wing" from 2001-2005, and won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her performance in the 2003 television adaptation of the Broadway production, "Angels in America."  She then went on to star in the popular series, "Weeds," for eight seasons.  She won another Golden Globe and was nominated for three Emmy Awards for her work.

Early Life

Parker was born on August 2, 1964, in Columbia, South Carolina. She is the youngest of four children born to parents Caroline Louise and John Morgan Parker. Her father worked as a U.S. Army judge, meaning Parker spent parts of her childhood in places like Tennessee, Texas, Thailand, Germany, and France. Parker attended Marcos de Niza High School in Tempe, Arizona, and then graduated from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 1986.

Career

Parker got her start in acting when she landed a role in "Ryan's Hope," a soap opera, in the 1980s. She moved to New York near the end of the decade and started earning a few minor roles before making her Broadway debut as the lead role in "Prelude to a Kiss." She also moved with the production as it traveled around as an off-Broadway performance. Her work was highly reviewed and won her the Clarence Derwent Award and a Tony Award nomination.

In 1989, she was cast in the film "Longtime Companion," which focused on the seriousness of the AIDS epidemic. Parker landed many movie roles in the 1990s. She starred in "Grand Canyon" and "Fried Green Tomatoes" in 1991 and in "The Client" and "Bullets over Broadway" in 1994. The next year, she was in "Boys on the Side" and "Reckless." In 1996, she starred with Nicole Kidman, Viggo Mortensen, John Malkovich, and Christian Bale in "The Portrait of a Lady."

She also continued taking theater roles, appearing in "How I Learned to Drove" in 1997. For this role, she received the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Actress and the Obie Award for Performance. She also appeared in several independent films in the late 1990s, like "Let the Devil Wear Black," "The Five Senses," and "The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn."

Her next big role came in 2003 in the six-hour HBO adaptation of "Angels in America." Her performance of the character Harper Pitt earned her both a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film.

The following year, in 2004, she appeared in "Saved!" as well as the television film "Miracle Run." Additionally, she appeared in the play "Reckless" on Broadway, which earned her a nomination for a Tony Award for Best Actress in 2005.

In 2005, Parker was cast as the lead in the television series "Weeds." The show became very popular and again led to award wins and nominations. During the show's run from 2005 to 2012, she received three nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in Comedy Series and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series Comedy.

In 2007, Parker earned a role in the television film "The Robber Bride," followed by "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." In 2008, she was in "The Spiderwick Chronicles" and the off-Broadway production of "Dead Man's Cell Phone." She was also cast in the revival of the play "Hedda Gabler" from January to March 2009.

Parker played opposite Bruce Willis in the action movie "Red" in October 2010. The following year, she became the host of the tenth season of the PBS documentary series "Independent Lens." She then reprised her role from "Red" in "Red 2" and "R.I.P.D." Other theater work during this time included roles in "The Snow Geese" and "Heisenberg." She also starred in the Broadway play "The Sound Inside" beginning in 2019, for which she received a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She was also cast in "How I Learned to Drive" in 2019.

Personal Life

In 1996, Parker began dating actor Billy Crudup. The couple got pregnant together in 2003, but Crudup left Parker to begin dating actress Claire Danes before their son was born in 2004. Actress Susan Sarandon is the godmother of her son, William. In September of 2007, Parker adopted a second child, Caroline, from Ethiopia.

In December of 2006, Parker started dating Jeffrey Dean Morgan, a fellow actor she met on the set of the show "Weeds." In February of 2008, the couple announced their engagement but ended up breaking up the following April before getting married.

Parker has been involved in a number of charity and philanthropic-related causes and organizations. She has worked to provide resources for those affected by the Ugandan civil war and was honored in 2013 for her work with the Hope North organization. She has also participated in various charity dinners organized by the David Lynch Foundation along with Tom Hanks to help veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. In 2015, she published a memoir called "Dear Mr. You."