Born April 28, 1952 in Wilkes-Barre, PA, McDonnell was raised in Ithaca, NY, graduating from the State University of New York at Fredonia. Her New York theater debut came with Sam Shepard’s “A Buried Child” in 1978, and she quickly amassed a series of acclaimed performances in productions on Broadway and across the country, including the 1980 play “Still Life,” which earned her an Obie Award. McDonnell also began a fruitful relationship with the Long Wharf Theatre Company during this period, remaining associated with the group for over two decades.
Film and television were secondary to McDonnell’s career during the early 1980s. She logged screen time on episodes of “As the World Turns” (CBS, 1956- ) and replaced Marcia Strassman on the short-lived comedy “E/R” (CBS, 1984-85), in which she played a no-nonsense hospital administrator and ex-wife to offbeat doctor Elliott Gould. She also earned a key role as a boarding house owner caught in the middle of a turn-of-the-century mining strike in John Sayles’ indie landmark “Matewan” (1987). But her feature breakthrough came three years later when Kevin Costner picked her to play the strong-willed Stands With A Fist in his blockbuster, “Dances With Wolves.” The feature made McDonnell a star at 37, and a first-time recipient of an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
The acclaim generated by “Wolves” assured McDonnell of choice film roles, many of which played to her knack for believably portraying strong, self-sufficient women. She was Kevin Kline’s unhappy wife, who unexpectedly finds herself the guardian of an abandoned infant in Lawrence Kasdan’s “Grand Canyon” (1991), and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in Sayles’ “Passion Fish” (1992), about a self-absorbed soap opera actress who rediscovers herself after a car accident leaves her paralyzed. Television also brought her noteworthy roles, most notably in a PBS televised broadcast of the play “O Pioneers!” (1991), in which she recreated her turn as the determined daughter of 19th-century immigrants, as well as a TNT presentation of Arthur Miller’s “The American Clock” (1993). Not all of her films were such standouts – she handled the girlfriend and wife roles with professionalism in the unremarkable espionage comedy-drama “Sneakers” (1992) and William Friedkin’s basketball film “Blue Chips” (1994) Even her First Lady had little to do in the science fiction epic “Independence Day” (1996) beyond await rescue by her husband (Bill Pullman). McDonnell also tried her hand again at a network series, and while the result – a comedy called “High Society” (CBS, 1995-96) that was inspired by “Absolutely Fabulous” (BBC, 1992-95, 2001-05) with McDonnell playing the Jennifer Saunders part – earned an Emmy nomination for guest star Jayne Meadows and a cult following, the show was yanked from the network schedule after 13 episodes.
Television offered McDonnell the majority of her screen work in the late 1990s – she was the judge in William Friedkin’s Golden Globe-winning version of “12 Angry Men” (1997) – which ironically co-starred her future “Galactica” castmate Edward James Olmos – and co-starred in the short-lived but well-received cop drama “Ryan Caulfield: Year One” (Fox, 1999). McDonnell also netted an Emmy nomination in 2002 for her recurring role as Noah Wyle’s emotionally brittle mother on “ER” (NBC, 1994- ), and kept her hand in feature films, including Lawrence Kasdan’s quirky “Mumford” (1999), the cult hit “Donnie Darko” (2001), in which she starred as Donnie’s mother, and “Nola” (2003), in which she played a high society madam who hires aspiring songwriter Emmy Rossum for her escort service.
That same year, McDonnell was cast as Laura Roslin, a former Secretary of Education who becomes the president of human colonists in producer Ronald D. Moore’s revamped “Battlestar Galactica.” The two-part miniseries generated stellar numbers for The Sci Fi Channel, which quickly put a series into motion. McDonnell’s Roslin was cut from the same cloth as her previous strong female characters – a fiercely independent and intelligent woman who fights for the respect afforded to her job, and struggles bravely with a bout of breast cancer (which nearly forces her to leave the position). Roslin later experiences something akin to a religious experience, which informs her decision to seek Earth as a haven for her people. Throughout the series, Roslin battles her own illness –which, by the third season finale, appeared to return – as well as the machinations of those who sought to unseat her as president. McDonnell’s performance was widely praised by critics and fans as one of the finest elements of “Galactica.”
McDonnell kept remarkably busy during her tenure on “Galactica” – she appeared in the Golden Globe-nominated biopic “Mrs. Harris” (2005), about Jean Harris’ murder of her lover Dr. Herman Tarnower, and co-starred with Roger Rees in the independent period comedy “Crazy Like a Fox” (2004), about a Virginia landowner who unleashes guerrilla warfare on the conniving land speculators that steal his farm. In 2008, she returned for the fourth and final season of “Galactica” while preparing production on the film “Jimmy Nolan” (2008), about the family of an autistic child.