Early in her career, the Chicago-born actress gained attention playing glamorous companions of larger-than-life men in several telefilms. As actress Marion Davies, she played opposite Robert Mitchum as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst in "The Hearst and Davies Affair" (ABC, 1985). Madsen made for a golden blonde version of the historically dark and brooding Claretta Petacci opposite George C. Scott's Italian dictator in the miniseries "Mussolini: The Untold Story" (NBC, 1985). She was a more apt choice to play a tough-as-nails beauty queen in "Long Gone" (HBO, 1987), a well regarded comedy-drama about a minor league baseball team in the 1950s.
Madsen's sporadic feature career up to that point had been uneven, usually playing leads in minor movies. Her first major screen credit was Princess Irulan in David Lynch's overblown sci-fi epic, "Dune" (1984). She was commendable opposite Anthony Edwards in "Mr. North" (1988), directed by her then-husband Danny Huston. Madsen also simmered stylishly as a bored Southern housewife who ensnared drifter Don Johnson in Dennis Hopper's cult classic, "The Hot Spot" (1990). Her best feature role at that point in time may well have been in "Candyman" (1992), a superior Clive Barker adaptation, as a graduate student whose life is transformed while studying urban folklore in a Chicago housing project. The film provided Madsen a rare opportunity to create a character that was as bright and curious as she was beautiful. She had far less to do in a subsequent horror outing, "The Prophecy" (1995), as an elementary school teacher involved in a battle between two angels on Earth.
The actress continued to work steadily, and to good effect, with roles in such highly touted films as director Rob Reiner's "Ghosts of Mississippi" (1996), director Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of John Grisham's legal potboiler "The Rainmaker" (1997) and Jan de Bont's version of Shirley Jackson's supernatural "The Haunting" (1999). But Madsen was subsequently seen more frequently in made-for-television fare and forgettable movies. Series television provided a welcome showcase for Madsen's talents: She spent several episodes of "Frasier" as one of two paramours vexing the indecisive Dr. Frasier Crane in 1999; enjoyed a rich recurring role on the ABC legal drama "The Practice" in 2001 as a political candidate's wife on trial for murder; and appeared for a season as Rebecca Sandstorm, the small town book club member who dares introduce radical, progressive reading material, on the NBC nostalgia drama "American Dream" from 2002-03.
Madsen's career blossomed into full flower in 2004 when Alexander Payne sent her the script for his comic road movie, "Sideways" and asked her to audition: the actress nailed the part and was cast as Maya, the warm-hearted wine country waitress who believes in reinvention and takes a liking to the neurotic Miles (Paul Giamatti). Her winning performance revitalized her career and earned critical plaudits. Madsen was bestowed with numerous awards and nominations for Best Supporting Actress: she won honors from the Independent Spirit Awards, the Los Angeles Film Critics, Toronto Film Critics and Broadcast Film Critics Association to name a few, and earned nominations for the SAG Awards, Golden Globes and Academy Awards.
Her career reignited, Madsen first played the kidnapped wife of a security expert (Harrison Ford) forced to divulge the workings of a system protecting a bank in “Firewall” (2006), before she joined the ensemble cast for “A Prairie Home Companion” (2006), Robert Altman’s fictional take on Garrison Keillor’s long-running radio program starring Meryl Streep, John C. Reilly and Lily Tomlin. Taking a break from film, Madsen returned to TV with “Smith” (CBS, 2006), a big-budget heist procedural told from the perspective of a crew of thieves. She played the wife of the crew’s leader (Ray Liotta), a cold and calculating mastermind looking to make a few last scores before retiring, whose suspicions about her husband’s activities are amplified when the FBI picks up the scent after a job gone bad at a Chicago museum. Though the series was cancelled shortly after it premiered, Madsen had received solid reviews for her work as Hope Stevens.
Showcasing her versatility, Madsen resumed her big screen career with roles in “The Number 23” (2007), a psychological thriller about a man (Jim Carrey) obsessed with an obscure book who is convinced it’s based on his own life, and “The Astronaut Farmer” (2007), a comedy co-starring Billy Bob Thorton, about a former NASA astronaut who still wants to travel into space and builds a rocket ship inside his barn to fulfill his dreams.