Personal Life
McDonnell was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and raised in Ithaca, New York. After graduating from the State University of New York at Fredonia, she attended drama school and joined the East Coast's prestigious Long Wharf Theatre Company, with which she worked for over 20 years. McDonnell is married to Randle Mell, who is also an actor. McDonnell and Mell currently reside in Pacific Palisades, California. They have two children, Olivia and Michael. In a question and answer session for Syfy regarding her role as Laura Roslin, she was asked if any of her character's political views caused her any discomfort because of her own views. She stated that several of the things her character did in Season Three of Battlestar Galactica " deeply against being a liberal progressive" and that portraying those views sometimes caused her "a bit of angst in having to commit to them."
Read more about this topic: Mary McDonnell
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“Whatever an artist’s personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.”
—Willem De Kooning (b. 1904)
“The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well. The truth is, many things are worth doing only in the most slovenly, halfhearted fashion possible, and many other things are not worth doing at all.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)