A dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, actress Rosemarie DeWitt made a steady transition from dreaming about acting to making a name for herself in the city’s vibrant theater industry. Following years of increasingly larger roles on the stage and on the small screen, it was an unusual family connection that provided her first major break into feature films. As the great granddaughter of the film’s subject, boxer James J. Braddock, DeWitt landed a plum role in Ron Howard’s Depression-era bio, Cinderella Man (2005). Taking her Hollywood shot, DeWitt went on to demonstrate her mix of comedic and dramatic chops in a variety of big and small screen projects – standing out as the face-to-watch with her take on the romantically-inclined hostage negotiator Emily Lehman on the Fox series, Standoff (2006-07), opposite wry leading man, Ron Livingston. But it was her dramatic skills as evidenced in acclaimed turns on Mad Men (AMC, 2007- ) and in Rachel Getting Married (2008) that underscored her obvious promise.
Ann Dowd acting career spans across television, film, and theater. As a an onstage performer, Dowd has appeared in several Broadway shows including the role of Prossy in CANDIDA, for which she received the Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Broadway Debut.
Her on screen experience is equally impressive, as she has starred in films such as Marley & Me, The Informant, garden State, Lorzenzo’s Oil, Philadelphia, Manchurian Candidate, and The Forgotten.
Dowd has had reoccurring roles on the Television series Nothing Sacred, Freaks and Geeks, The Education of Max Bickford and Third Watch. She has also appeared multiple times on Law & Order, Law & Order SVU, Law & Order Criminal Intent, and as a guest star on Pan Am, House, NYPD Blue, The X Files, Family Law, Touched by an Angel and many others.
Helen Hunt has enjoyed a diverse career not only as an award-winning actress, but more recently as an accomplished writer, director and producer. As an actress, her extensive and diverse body of work includes roles in film, theater, and television. Most recently, Hunt completed work on Steven Bernstein’s Decoding Annie Parker with Samantha Morton.
Other film credits include: Soul Surfer, Every Day, Bobby, Then She Found Me (which Hunt also co-wrote, produced, and directed), As Good As It Gets, What Women Want, Castaway, A Good Woman, Woody Allen’s The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Robert Altman’s Dr. T and the Women, Pay it Forward and Twister. Early career film credits are: The Waterdance, Kiss of Death, Mr. Saturday Night, Peggy Sue Got Married, Next of Kin, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Project X and Miles From Home.
Some of Hunt’s television work includes “Mad About You” and the critically acclaimed HBO Miniseries “Empire Falls.” For her role as Jamie Buchman in “Mad About You,” Hunt garnered four Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe® Awards (three as lead actress and one as Producer for Best Comedy), and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She also won the Best Actress Award at the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild and the Oscars for her role in the film AS GOOD AS IT GETS.
Hunt has directed television episodes of “Mad About You,” “The Paul Reiser Show” and most recently an upcoming installment of Showtime’s “Californication.” In 2007, she directed her first feature film THEN SHE FOUND ME based on a novel by Elinor Lipman. Hunt also co-wrote, produced and starred in this critically acclaimed and commercially successful film opposite Colin Firth, Matthew Broderick, and Bette Midler.
Hunt is an equally accomplished theater actress who most recently reprised the role of Stage Manager in David Cromer’s latest production of Our Town at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica this past January and February. Hunt first played the role of Stage Manager in the 2010 New York production of Our Town at the Barrow Street Theater. Additional theater credits include Twelfth Night (Viola) at Lincoln Center and Life X Three at Circle in the Square Theater. Other theatre credits are The Taming of the Shrew at NYSF-Shakespeare in the Park; Been Taken at EST; Much Ado About Nothing (Beatrice) at the Shakespeare Center L.A;, The Guys and Methusalem with the Actor’s Gang; The Value of Names at the Skylight Theatre; and Love Letters in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston.
A Los Angeles native, Hunt grew up in an artistic environment. Her father Gordon Hunt is a director and respected acting coach. Hunt currently lives in Los Angeles with her partner, Matthew Carnahan, her daughter Makena Lei and her stepson Emmett.
Brit Marling graduated from Georgetown University, with a bachelor’s in economics, and was offered a job with Goldman Sachs, which she turned down in favour of a career as an artist. She moved to Los Angeles to act and, after spending a couple of years exploring the movie industry and being offered roles as “the cute blonde in horror movies”, she taught herself to write, reasoning that the best way to get decent parts was to write them, herself. She worked on two movies, simultaneously – one in the mornings, one in the afternoons – and eventually both Another Earth (2011) and Sound of My Voice (2011) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011.
Lorraine Toussaint is best known for starring alongside Annie Potts in the television series Any Day Now. She graduated from Manhattan’s School of Performing Arts in 1978, before going on to graduate from Juilliard School. Toussaint was a featured recurring guest-star in the first few seasons of the legal drama Law & Order as defense lawyer Shambala Green. She was also a regular guest on the drama Threat Matrix, as Carina Wright/Agent Cassandra Hodges. In 1993, Toussaint appeared in Point Of No Return, starring Bridget Fonda and for several years she starred as Captain Kate Perry in the TNT series Saving Grace.
“I love everybody. We were so lucky to get to work together once; if we get to do it again in the future, that would be amazing,” Cardinelli tells IFC of working with the “Freaks and Geeks” cast.
“Sure, I can be in ‘Ant-Man.’ Why not?” Winstead tells IFC at the Spirit Awards.
Timberlake hosts “SNL” on March 9.
“It’s all about the script for me,” Oyelowo says.
