Mary-Louise Parker Height, Weight and Body Measurements

Mary-Louise Parker is generally reported to be about 5 ft 6 in (168 cm) tall with a slim build. She has never released an official weight, so none appears here.

Her appeal has long come from voice, timing and fearlessness more than from anything on a stats sheet.

Quick facts

Build and style

Parker is slim and moves with a loose, unforced energy that suits both comedy and drama. In public she gravitates toward understated outfits: tailored jackets, simple dresses and the occasional vivid color, with little fuss. Her red hair, often worn long or tousled, has been part of her look in several roles.

Stage roots

Her professional breakthrough came in the theater. She won a Tony Award for her work in David Auburn’s Proof in 2000, a performance still talked about by theater fans. She has returned to Broadway and Off-Broadway often, appearing in new plays and revivals, and she is known as one of the more adventurous stage actresses of her era.

Film and television

On screen she appeared in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) in an early notable part, and she worked in films such as Grand Canyon and Longtime Companion. She earned an Emmy for her role in the miniseries Angels in America and later played a recurring role as Amy Gardner on The West Wing.

Her signature TV role came with Weeds, in which she played Nancy Botwin, a suburban widow who begins selling marijuana. The show ran for eight seasons and earned her a Golden Globe. Later she appeared in the action-comedy Red (2010) with Bruce Willis, and returned for its sequel.

Writing

Parker is also an author. Her memoir Dear Mr. You, published in 2015, is written as a series of letters to the men who shaped her life, and it was well received for its prose style.

Personal life

She has maintained a deliberately private life and has not said much about relationships beyond what appears in her book, so this profile leaves that part out.

Legacy

Few actresses have moved so easily between stage, television and print. Whether in a small theater or a primetime show, she brings a recognizable wry intelligence to each role.

On Broadway

Parker’s stage record is longer than most people realise. She made her Broadway debut in Prelude to a Kiss in 1990, and she has since returned in a string of ambitious productions. Proof remains the signature one, a play about a young woman, her late mathematician father and the question of who really wrote a groundbreaking proof. Years later she took on Simon Stephens’s two-person drama Heisenberg (2015), a showcase for her unpredictable comic timing. Theatre critics have often noted that she seems most at home in roles that are a little prickly and hard to predict.

Weeds and the antihero era

Weeds arrived in 2005, in the early days of television’s turn toward flawed, morally slippery leads. Nancy Botwin was funny, reckless and often infuriating, and Parker made her sympathetic anyway. The show’s theme song and suburban satire became part of pop culture in the 2000s, and the role earned Parker a Golden Globe and several other nominations.

What fans ask

People often ask whether she was the same actress in Fried Green Tomatoes and Weeds. She was, and the difference between the two roles is a good illustration of her range. They also ask whether she plays herself in her memoir. Dear Mr. You is written in her own voice as letters, so in a sense, yes, and it was widely praised for its poetic, offbeat style. And, as with many actresses of her generation, fans wonder how she has stayed so visible without chasing celebrity. The answer seems to be a steady pull toward interesting parts, often on stage, rather than a taste for red-carpet attention.

Frequently asked questions