Career
Keener had a supporting role as Lt. Cricket Sideris in the television series, "Ohara," about an Asian detective. The series ran from January, 1987 to May, 1988.
Keener's first film appearance was one line in About Last Night... (1986). Although she struggled professionally over the next few years one low-quality project had an unexpected dividend. Keener met her future husband, actor Dermot Mulroney in 1987 while working on Survival Quest (1989), after Mulroney became stuck while attempting to scale a cliff.
She also guest-starred as an artist on an episode of Seinfeld called "The Letter". She played Jerry's girlfriend, an artist who painted the famous portrait of Kramer. Keener then earned her first starring role in Johnny Suede with the then unknown Brad Pitt. Her performance gained critical acclaim and earned her her first Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Female Lead. She went on to work with director Tom Dicillo, again, in Living in Oblivion (1995). Two years later she was once again nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her performance in Walking and Talking, an independent cult-comedy film directed by Nicole Holofcener.
In 2000, Keener earned her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Being John Malkovich, directed by Spike Jonze. In 2001, she worked with director Nicole Holofcener in Lovely and Amazing garnering her a third Independent Spirit Award nomination. In 2002, she co-starred with Edward Norton in the off-Broadway revival of Burn This and the film Death to Smoochy. She also took part in the film Full Frontal, and S1m0ne alongside Al Pacino.
In 2005, she made a comeback starring in the political thriller The Interpreter, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, opposite Daniel Day-Lewis, and was cast as the love interest of Steve Carell in Judd Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Keener's performance as writer Harper Lee in Capote (also 2005) earned her several awards and nominations, including her second Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In 2006, she starred in the film Friends with Money, directed by Nicole Holofcener.
In 2007, Keener played Jan Burres in Sean Penn's critically acclaimed film Into the Wild, based on Jon Krakauer's best-selling book of the same name. In 2008, her film An American Crime, the true story of Gertrude Baniszewski, a middle-aged mother who tortured and killed Sylvia Likens in her Indiana home, was aired on Showtime. Keener plays Baniszewski and her portrayal earned her an Emmy nomination in the Best Actress in a TV Mini-Series or Movie category. In 2008, Keener portrayed Philip Seymour Hoffman's wife Adele in Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. Keener played the title character's mother in the 2010 film Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, based on the series of books by Rick Riordan.
Read more about this topic: Catherine Keener
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”
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“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)