Blythe Danner

Versatile and venerable veteran American actress Blythe Danner (born February 3, 1943) has over 100 television, stage, and big screen credits to her resume. She is perhaps more recently known for her role opposite Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller in the 2000 comedy hit [[Meet the Parents]], and its hit sequels, [[Meet the Fockers]] and [[Little Fockers]].

Blythe Danner Biography

Blythe Danner Early life

Blyth was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Katharine (née Kile) and Harry Earl Danner, a bank executive. She has a brother, opera singer/actor Harry Danner, a sister, former performer turned director Dorothy (Dottie) Danner, and a half brother, violin maker William Moennig. Danner has Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry; one of her great-grandmothers was born in Barbados.

Acting career

After graduation from high school in 1961, young Blythe studied acting and got her degree from Bard College and began her career in Boston theater companies. By 25, she won the Theater World Award for her work in Moliere's The Miser at Lincoln Center. She also won the 1970 Tony award for her role in Butterflies Are Free. She made her film premiere in the same year in the television production of Dr. Cook's Garden (1971) (TV).

In 1972, Danner portrayed Martha Jefferson in the movie version of 776. Also that same year, she played a jilted wife opposite Peter Falk and John Cassavetes in an episode of the hit 1970's NBC-TV series Columbo episode "Etude in Black".

Blythe's earliest starring film role was opposite [[Alan Alda]] in To Kill a Clown (1972). In 1976, she also appeared opposite Alda in an episode of M*A*S*H entitled The More I See You, playing the love interest of Alda's character Hawkeye Pierce. She played the role of Zelda Fitzgerald in The Last of the Belles (1974). She was the eponymous heroine in the film Lovin' Molly (1974) (directed by Sidney Lumet). She then appeared in Futureworld playing Tracy Ballard with co-star [[Peter Fonda]] (1976).

In the film version of Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical play Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986), she portrayed a middle-aged Jewish mother, and in the 1982 TV movie Inside the Third Reich, she played the wife of Albert Speer. She has appeared in two films based on the novels of Pat Conroy, The Great Santini (1979) and The Prince of Tides (1991), as well as two television movies adapted from books by Anne Tyler, Saint Maybe and Back When We Were Grownups, both for the Hallmark Hall of Fame.

For 25 years, she has been a regular performer at the Williamstown Summer Theater Festival. She has also been nominated for Tonys for performances in A Streetcar Named Desire and Betrayal. Married to director Bruce Paltrow, she is the mother of two acting children Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake Paltrow.