PATRICIA
CLARKSON

Patricia Clarkson is an American actor born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 29 December 1959. Her career spans stage, film and television, with a range of performances in independent cinema and major productions.

Clarkson studied theatre at Fordham University before attending the Yale School of Drama. Her early screen credits include The Untouchables (1987), and she continued to work across film, television and the stage in the following years.

In 2003, The Station Agent and Pieces of April brought particular attention to her work. In the latter she played Joy Burns, a mother travelling to a tense family Thanksgiving, and earned an Academy Award nomination for supporting actress.

Her television roles include Aunt Sarah in Six Feet Under, for which she won two Emmy Awards, and Adora Crellin in Sharp Objects. These characters occupy very different emotional worlds, illustrating the variety of her screen work.

Clarkson has also continued to take on leading roles, including equal-pay campaigner Lilly Ledbetter in Lilly (2025). Across these projects, her performances invite attention to the pressures and contradictions within each character rather than treating them as a single type.