Background

Ethnicity: Elizabeth Perkins's paternal grandparents were Greek, and the family's surname was originally "Pisperikos". Her mother's family had British Isles ancestry.

Elizabeth Perkins was born on November 18, 1960, in New York City, New York, the United States. Her mother, Jo Williams, was a concert pianist and drug treatment counselor, and her father, James Perkins, was a businessman, farmer, and writer. After the divorce of her parents in 1963, Elizabeth, along with her two older sisters, was raised in her maternal grandmother’s 600-acre farm in Guilford, Vermont near Brattleboro.

Her paternal grandparents were Greek immigrants who anglicized their surname from Pisperikos to Perkins when they immigrated to the United States.

Education

Elizabeth Perkins attended an elite preparatory school, Northfield Mount Herman Prep School, at Northfield, Massachusetts. In 1978-1981 she studied at Goodman School of Drama at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, where she received her Certificate in Acting.

Career

A graduate of the prominent Goodman Theater School, Elizabeth Perkins headed to New York in the early 1980s and launched her professional career with a co-starring gig in the touring company of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983), a role she reprised the following year in Broadway. Subsequently, she worked in numerous of ensemble companies, like the Steppenwolf Theater and The New York Shakespeare Festival.

In 1986, Elizabeth made her screen debut in Edward Zwick’s comedy About Last Night ..., playing the wisecracking pal of Demi Moore. This movie adaptation of David Mamet’s 1972 play about the singles scene Sexual Perversity in Chicago also starred Rob Lowe and James Belushi.

The amber-eyed actress next portrayed gal friend to Judd Nelson in Bob Clark’s From the Hip (1987) and Jeff Daniels in the drama Sweet Hearts Dance (1988) before having a career breakthrough with her role as Tom Hanks’ toy company co-worker, Susan, in Big (1988), a popular comedy feature directed by Penny Marshall. At the end of the decade, she acted in the sci-fi short Teach 109, which aired on PBS’s “American Playhouse” in 1990.

1990 saw Elizabeth play Tom Berenger’s foe in Alan Rudolph’s unsatisfactory Love at Large and gain critical acclaim for her performance as the troublesome wife of Aidan Quinn in the ensemble of Barry Levinson’s Avalon.

She went on to give fine acting in 1991′s The Doctor, in which played a terminal cancer patient who makes William Hurt sentient of his heartlessness. The same year, she also co-starred with Kevin Bacon in the drama film He Said, She Said. The dark-haired actress then could be seen in the warm, nostalgic Indian Summer (1993), the blockbuster hit The Flintstones (1993, as the long-agony Wilma), the lukewarm remake of Miracle on 34th Street (1994) and the ensemble Moonlight and Valentino (1995, opposite Whoopi Goldberg, Kathleen Turner, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Shadia Simmons). 1995 also found Elizabeth on the stage in a Los Angeles production of John Patrick Shanley’s Four Dogs and a Bone, directed by movie director Larry Kasdan.

After this, Elizabeth, who made her TV-movie bow in 1993′s based-on-fact drama For Their Own Good, concentrated more on television. She starred as a Catholic woman who adopted her ex-employers son to protect him from the Holocaust in the “Mamusha” segment of Showtime’s Rescuers: Stories of Courage: Two Women and a mother who finds out her late son has been replicated in the NBC film Cloned (both 1997).

The next year, she portrayed astronaut wife Marilyn Lovell in the HBO highly celebrated miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. Elizabeth returned to filmmaking with a forceful turn as a committed AIDS activist in the grim I’m Losing You (1999) and a feature role in the Antonio Banderas-helmed Crazy in Alabama (1999).

A supporting role as the besieged sister of Sandra Bullock in Betty Thomas’ 28 Days is Elizabeth’ opening work in the new millennium before she was cast as the arrogant wife of a man whose lesbian aunt had recently died in the “1961″ segment of HBO’s If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000). She continued to make her TV series debut as a regular in the NBC sitcom Battery Park (2000), playing Madeleine Dunleavy.

Since 2005, Perkins has played Celia Hodes, a psychotic, ambitious and highly entertaining PTA mother, alongside Mary-Louise Parker and Justin Kirk on the Showtime series Weeds. Thanks to her work on Weeds, Perkins has received two Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress in a TV Series, Miniseries or Made for TV Motion Picture (in 2006 and 2007). She has also been nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. At a screening of the Season 2 finale of Weeds, at the Museum of TV and Radio on October 25, 2006, Perkins said that she considers Celia Hodes her favorite role in her career because she is so different from the characters she is usually cast as. The show is currently finished with its 5th season, with a sixth season currently airing. On May 6, 2010, she announced that the fifth season of Weeds was her last despite the cliffhanger her character had in the season finale.

In 2012-2013, she worked on her diabetes campaign called Diabetes Co-Stars and starred in the ABC comedy series How to Live with Your Parents (for the Rest of Your Life) as Elaine Green.

Achievements

• Perkins was nominated for a 1986 Joseph Jefferson Award for Actress in a Principal Role in a Play for "Lydia Breeze", at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois. She is also well known for her role as Celia Hodes in the Showtime TV series Weeds, for which she received three Primetime Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nominations.
  
  Perkins was also listed as one of twelve “Promising New Actors of 1986” in John Willis’ Screen World, Vol. 38.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Love at Large

    (Love is the only lead worth following! Tom Berenger (Shat...)

    1990
  • All I Want

    (After 17-year-old misfit Jones Dillon (Elijah Wood) drops...)

    2002
  • 28 Days

    (A disastrous drunken episode lands successful New York jo...)

    2000
  • Crazy In Alabama

    (Antonio Banderas' directorial debut weaves together the s...)

    1999
  • Moonlight & Valentino

    (Gwyneth Paltrow, Elizabeth Perkins, Whoopi Goldberg and K...)

    1995
  • Jiminy Glick in Lalawood

    (Martin Short stars in this satirically funny stab at show...)

    2004
  • The Ring Two

    (When evidence at a local crime scene reveals a mysterious...)

    2005
  • The Flintstones

    (Make way for the modern Stone Age family in this live-act...)

    1994
  • I'm Losing You

    (Based on Bruce Wagner's best selling novel, "I'm Losing Y...)

    1998
  • Must Love Dogs

    (Based on the novel by Claire Cook, a 40-year-old divorcee...)

    2005
  • From the Hip

    (Rising legal star Robin Weathers must re-examine not only...)

    1987
  • Avalon

    (A Jewish family comes to the USA at the beginning of the ...)

    1990
  • Speak

    (Kristen Stewart stars in this drama based on the award-wi...)

    2004
  • Cats & Dogs

    (A look at the top-secret, high-tech espionage war going o...)

    2001
  • The Thing About My Folks

    (A father and son embark upon an emotional road trip throu...)

    2005
  • He Said, She Said

    (Dan (Kevin Bacon) and Lorie (Elizabeth Perkins) are journ...)

    1991
  • Hop

    (The furry heir apparent to the Easter Bunny heads off to ...)

    2011
  • Big

    (Tom Hanks earned a 1988 Best Actor Academy Award nominati...)

    1988
  • Sweet Hearts Dance

    (Long-married high school sweethearts (Don Johnson, Susan ...)

    1988
  • About Last Night

    (A couple (Rob Lowe, Demi Moore) deals with the downside o...)

    1986
  • Miracle On 34th Street

    (Six-year-old Susan Walker has doubts about childhood's mo...)

    1994
  • Finding Nemo

    (Nemo, a young clownfish is captured and taken to a dentis...)

    2003
  • Kids in America

    (Rebellions high school misfits take a stand against a pow...)

    2005
  • Indian Summer

    (Eight friends who reunite after 20 years to the camp of t...)

    1993
  • The Doctor

    (His own experience as a patient changes the life of a sur...)

    1991

• TV series

  • Watch How to Live With Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life)

    (They say it takes a village to raise a child, but in Poll...)

    2013
  • Weeds: The Complete Collection

Views

Perkins is pro-gun. She supports Moms Demand Action, a grassroots movement fighting for public safety measures that protect people from gun violence.

She also supports animal-related charities, especially dog rescuing ones.

Quotations: "Never let anyone sway your belief in goodness: tolerance, fairness, justice, truth, respect, charity & above all else, love for one another."

"I feel like empowering women in media is very much like one step up, two steps back. And once we can get to two steps up and one step back, we’ll be making some headway. Since I’ve been doing this for 35 years, I’ve seen how far we have come. But I also see how much we’re going to have to fight to continue to get that kind of solid representation as women in the media."

"Life is short and precious. Be humble and love deeply."

Personality

Perkins is an animal lover. She loves pets and currently has two dogs named Buster and Lulu. She also has an overwhelming fear of heights. One time she had to be rescued from the Capilano Suspension Bridge in Vancouver.

Physical Characteristics: In 2005, at the age of 44, Perkins learned that she had latent autoimmune diabetes, a form of type 1 diabetes that is most often diagnosed in middle age.

Interests

• Writers

  The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh, The Feminine in Fairytales by Marie-Louise Von Franz, Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 by Adrienne Rich

• Music & Bands

  Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, MGMT, Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Counting Crows, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, Avett Brothers, Greensky Bluegrass, Brandi Carlile

Connections

Elizabeth Perkins got married to Terry Kinney in 1984. The couple divorced in 1988. She has one daughter, Hannah Jo Phillips (born September 1, 1991), with her ex-boyfriend Maurice Phillips. In 2000, she got married again to Argentinian-born cinematographer Julio Macat. Through this marriage, she got three stepsons: Maximillian, Alexander, and Andreas.

Father:

James Perkins

Mother:

Jo Williams

Spouse:

Julio Macat

ex-spouse:

Terry Kinney

Daughter:

Hannah Jo Phillips

ex-boyfriend:

Maurice Phillips

stepson:

Maximillian Macat

stepson:

Alexander Macat

stepson:

Andreas Macat

colleague:

Demi Moore

colleague:

Kevin Bacon

colleague:

Sharon Stone

colleague:

Gwyneth Paltrow

colleague:

Antonio Banderas

colleague:

Willem Dafoe

colleague:

Kristen Stewart

colleague:

Chloë Sevigny

colleague:

Naomi Watts

colleague:

Emily VanCamp

colleague:

Michelle Williams

References

• Official Website Of Elizabeth Perkins
• Elizabeth Perkins on Instagram
• Elizabeth Perkins on Twitter