Mary Steenbergen was born in Newport, Arkansas on February 8, 1953. She was raised in the Park Hill section of North Little Rock. She graduated from Northeast High School. After dropping out of Hendrix, she headed for New York to become an actress in 1972. There she spent six years attending acting classes, performing in a troupe called Cracked Tokens, and scrapping by as a waitress (throughout this period she earned a total of fifty dollars as an actress). Then, in a fairy-tale fashion, Jack Nicholson, who handed her a leading role in his 1978 movie, Goin' South, plucked her from a casting call. Next came Time After Time, co-starring British actor Malcolm McDowell, whom she married (and later divorced). In 1980, her performance as the scattered brained Lynda Drummer in Melvin and Howard earned her best supporting actress awards from the Academy, the Golden Globe Association, the New York Film Critics' Circle, and the National Society of Film Critics. Her other movies include: Ragtime, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, Cross Creek, Romantic Comedy, One Magic Christmas, Dead of Winter, Parenthood, and Philadelphia. In 1987, she served as executive producer on End of the Line, a film about the effects of a railroad closing on the lives of its workers. Shot entirely in Central Arkansas, it premiered in Little Rock. She returns to Arkansas often to assist local charities, notably the Arkansas Children's Hospital.

Credit: anythingarkansas.com