November 16: Happy Birthday Martha Plimpton

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https://lebeauleblog.com/2020/11/16/...rtha-plimpton/

Martha Plimpton is celebrating her 50th birthday today. She is the daughter of Keith Carradine, and has had the most successful acting career in her generation of the Carradine family. Through her mother, Shelley Plimpton, she is a distant relative of author George Plimpton.

Plimpton began acting and modeling when she was about 10 or 11. Her first well-known film role was as Stef Steinbrenner in The Goonies. She was one of the most prominent teen actresses of the late eighties, appearing in films such as Shy People, Stars and Bars and Parenthood. She was River Phoenix’s love interest in The Mosquito Coast and Running on Empty.



Plimpton landed her first starring role in the 1991 film Samantha, which was a box office flop. During the rest of the 1990s, she did a lot of indie film work, appearing in Last Summer in the Hamptons, I Shot Andy Warhol, and Eye of God. Her highest-profile film during the decade may have been the ensemble film Beautiful Girls.

Alongside her screen career, Plimpton has been a very successful stage actress. She made her off-Broadway debut before her 10th birthday. During the late 2000s, she was a Tony nominee for three straight years–for Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia (for which she also won a Drama Desk Award), for Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, and for a revival of Rodgers & Hart’s Pal Joey. She has also done a lot of work with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and won an Obie Award for an off-Broadway production of Harold Brighouse’s Hobson’s Choice.

At the end of the 1990s, Plimpton began doing a lot of TV guest work. She was nominated for an Emmy for a guest appearance on Law and Order: SVU, and won one for Outstanding Guest Actress for The Good Wife. Beginning in 2010, she starred on Fox’s Raising Hope, and was an Emmy nominee for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series during the show’s four year run.