Biografie

Once lived in an apartment with Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Sam Raimi, Scott Spiegel, and Holly Hunter.

Her performance as Marge Gunderson in Fargo: Blutiger Schnee (1996) is ranked #27 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.

She wears the wedding ring that originally was worn by her husband Joel Coen's first wife, a brief marriage that had ended in divorce in the late 1970s. She explained that she was being practical, and that the ring shouldn't be wasted.

Was the third and youngest child adopted by her minister father, Vernon McDormand, and his wife, Noreen.

Has one son, Pedro McDormand Coen, adopted from Paraguay in 1994.

[on how she got the part in Fargo: Blutiger Schnee (1996)] "The fact that I'm sleeping with the director may have something to do with it."

On playing 'mothers': "Those roles weren't just mothers in a story about a male protagonist. First they were specific, three-dimensional people."

On "women's pictures": "Most women's pictures are as boring and as formulaic as men's pictures. In place of a car chase or a battle scene, what you get is an extreme closeup of a woman breaking down. I cry too, maybe three times a week, but it's not in closeup. It's a wide shot. It's in the context of a very large and very mean world."

I'm a character actress, plain and simple...Who can worry about a career? Have a life. Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again.

With most people when there's a pain in their life there's mental scar tissue that forms over the pain and helps you go on living. An actor's scar tissue really never covers over things the same way, not if you're going to be sensitive. With good technique, an actor can do that and walk through life without going insane.