Who

Harden is a film, TV, and stage actress who won an Oscar for her portrayal of artist Lee Krasner in the 2000 biopic Pollock.

Backstory

Born in La Jolla, Harden grew up in a Navy family and spent much of her childhood on the move. Her life remained peripatetic even after she moved out: She attended three different colleges before ending up at the University of Texas, where she majored in theater. After graduating in the early '80s she moved to New York, where she earned an MFA from NYU's Tisch School and worked as a waitress for a catering company and as a babysitter to make ends meet while trying to launch a career. Despite being told that she'd never make it because of her "flaring nostrils," she eventually landed a break when she was cast in Joel and Ethan Coen's 1990 film Miller's Crossing alongside Gabriel Byrne and John Turturro. After playing Ava Gardner in the 1992 miniseries Sinatra, in 1993 she returned to the stage to star in Tony Kushner's Angels in America, which earned her a Tony nomination. The following year she appeared with Ed Harris and Beverly D'Angelo in Simpatico at the Public Theater.

Harden continued to play small parts in films such as 1996's The Daytrippers, but her career-making role didn't come until 2000, when she starred opposite Ed Harris in the biopic Pollock and won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Since then, she's given solid performances in over a dozen films (of varying levels of quality), including Mystic River (for which she earned an Oscar nomination), Mona Lisa Smile, Bad News Bears, and American Dreamz. More recently, Harden began starring in the FX series Damages alongside Glenn Close.

Personal

Harden met hubby Thaddaeus Scheel—now a documentary producer—while working on the set of 1996's The Spitfire Grill. (Scheel was the prop master, and they were introduced by actress Ellen Burstyn.) Daughter Eulala, to whom Burstyn is godmother, was born in 1999 and has already appeared in two films with Mom. Twins Julitta and Hudson arrived in 2004.

Habitat

The family lives in a brownstone, which they bought for $3.9 million in 2003, in Harlem's Mount Morris Park neighborhood. Harden also has a 150-acre lakefront estate in Mountain Dale, NY.