Born in Arkansas on February 8, 1953, Steenburgen was the daughter of a railroad employee. Pursuing drama in college, she headed to New York in 1972, where she worked with an improvisational troupe. She was spotted by Jack Nicholson, who cast her as his feisty "in name only" frontier wife in 1978's Goin' South. Two years later, she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Melvin Dummar's inamorata in Melvin and Howard (1980).

Gentle, intelligent and possessing a scathing wit, Steenburgen has turned in several memorable roles in big and small films throughout her career, including Miss Firecracker (1989) and Life as a House (2001). Other more recent films she's been in are: Four Christmases (2008), The Proposal (2009), The Help (2011), and Last Vegas (2013), a comedy in which she was able to express her inner chanteuse, as well as her self-described late blooming talents for song writing; (she co-wrote the song she performs in the film.)

Able to convey a wide age and character range, Steenburgen was effectively cast as a free-spirited Frisco girl in Time After Time (1979), the corseted matriarch of a turn-of-the-century household in Ragtime (1981), prim authoress Marjorie Rawlins in Cross Creek (1983), a long-suffering suburban housewife in Parenthood (1989), and a Marcia Clark-like attorney in Philadelphia (1993). She also portrayed the Jules Verne-loving Western schoolmarm Clara in Back to the Future 3 (1990), a role she perpetuated (via voice-over) on the Back to the Future TV cartoon series. In 1988, she was executive producer of End of the Line, in which she also appeared. Formerly married for several years to actor Malcolm McDowell, Steenburgen married former Cheers star Ted Danson in 1995. The two have collaborated on a number of projects, including 1994's Pontiac Moon and the made-for-TV Gulliver's Travels in 1996.

Recently, Steenburgen was cast in season three of the Netflix original series, "Orange is the New Black."

Among Steenburgen's philanthropic pursuits, she, along with Danson, are heavily involved in preserving the oceans through the organization Oceana, which helps to educate and change policy on overfishing around the world.

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