Mary Steenburgen
"Clara Clayton Brown" (3,Animated)

BORN:			February 08, 1953, Newport, Arkansas
EDUCATION:			Graduate of Neighborhood Playhouse. Honorary Doctorates from University of Arkansas in Little Rock & Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas.
SPOUSE:			Ted Danson on October 07, 1995
CHILDREN:			Lilli Amanda (1-22-81), Charlie

MARY STEENBURGEN, a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, moved to New York in 1972 to study acting. She joined the Back to the Future cast as Clara Clayton, an 1885 woman whose intelligence and charm transcend the boundaries of the space-time continuum and caused Doc Brown to be instantly smitten with her.

A chance meeting with Jack Nicholson in a casting office led to a screen test and her motion picture debut opposite the actor (and director) in Goin' South. Co-starring in the film was Christopher Lloyd, who spoke one of the first lines ever uttered on screen to Steenburgen. "Chris played a character named Towfield. In the film, when I spurn his advances and save Jack, who is a criminal about to be hung, Towfield says 'I've asked you out a thousand times, and all I got was the flap of your umbrella'." While on the set of Back to the Future Part III in Sonora, California, Steenburgen had a picture taken with Lloyd and sent it to Jack Nicholson, along with a note that read, "It took him 12 years, but Towfield finally got the girl!"

In addition to her previous experience in westerns, Back to the Future Part III was her second time travel movie. The first being Time After Time, which found H.G. Wells, portrayed by her first husband, actor Malcolm McDowell, traveling to modern day San Francisco, where he gets involved with a 1980's woman, portrayed by Steenburgen. "Actually, I've played the same scene in that film and in Back to the Future Part III," she reveals. "I've had a man from a different time period tell me that he's in love with me, but he has to go back to his own time. My response in both cases is, of course, disbelief, and I order them out of my life. Afterwards, I find out I was wrong and that, in fact, the man is indeed from another time, and I go after him (them) to profess my love. It's a pretty strange feeling to find yourself doing the same scene, so many years apart, for the second time in your career."

She was nominated for a Golden Globe® Award in 1978 for Goin' South, and she won the 1980 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress with her portrayal of Lynda Dummar in Melvin and Howard. She has since starred in such films as Cross Creek, A Midsummer's Night Sex Comedy, Ragtime, Romantic Comedy, One Magic Christmas, Dead of Winter and Miss Firecracker. Prior to her work in Back to the Future Part III, Steenburgen starred opposite Steve Martin in one of 1989's biggest hits, Parenthood. On television, she starred in the Showtime mini-series Tender is the Night, and earned an Emmy® nomination for the CBS-TV production of The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank. She also performed in the play "Marvin's Room".

Mary can currently be seen in the CBS comedy series Ink with her husband and co-star, Ted Danson.

Steenburgen married Danson on October 7, 1995 in Martha's Vineyard, Massechusetts, where the couple lives with her two children, Charlie and Lilli, from her previous marriage to Malcolm McDowell.