Joan Allen mini-bio: Allen is the youngest of four children born to gas-station owner Jeff Allen and his wife Dorothy, a homemaker. She attended Rochelle Township High School, and was voted most likely to succeed. She transferred to Northern Illinois University in 1976, where she graduated. (Other attendees include Dan Castellaneta, Justin Mentell, and Matt Ricci.)
Allen began her performing career as a stage actress and on television before making her film debut in the movie, Compromising Positions (1985).
In 1989 Allen returned to the stage and won a Tony Award in her Broadway debut performance in Burn This. She also starred in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Heidi Chronicles.
She received Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress for her roles as Pat Nixon in Nixon (1995) and as a woman whose husband is accused of witchcraft in The Crucible (1996). She was also nominated for Best Actress in The Contender, (produced by co-star Gary Oldman and producer Douglas Urbanski) as a politician who becomes the object of scandal. Allen is respected by her peers both for her professionalism and the intense preparation she brings to each of her roles. For example, to play a blind woman in the cult classic Manhunter (1986), she went to a school for the blind and wore a blindfold for several days. Brian Cox, her co-star in Manhunter and The Bourne Supremacy, called Allen the finest actress he had ever worked with and one of the best in the business.
In 2001 Allen starred in the miniseries The Mists of Avalon, which aired on TNT.
