Catherine Ann Keener is an American actress.
She has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her roles
as Maxine in Being John Malkovich and Harper Lee in Capote.
Keener also appeared in the critically acclaimed films Into the Wild and Synecdoche, New York.
Early life and education Keener was born in Miami, Florida, the third
of five children of Evelyn and Jim Keener, a manager of an automotive store.
She is of Irish descent on her father's side and of Lebanese descent on her mother's.
Keener was raised Roman Catholic and attended Catholic schools.
For high school, she attended Monsignor Edward Pace High School.
Keener's sister, Elizabeth Keener, is also an actress.
Her brother Michael was a Catholic priest for many years, serving at St. Peter and Paul
in Miami.
Keener attended Wheaton College, in Norton, Massachusetts, where she lived with an aunt
in order to save on room and board, feeling out of place among her more privileged peers.
Keener majored in English and history, enrolling in a theater course only when she was unable
to get into a photography class.
Her first theatrical production was the Wendy Wasserstein play, Uncommon Women and Others,
during her Junior year at Wheaton.
She graduated with her B.A. from Wheaton College in 1983.
Career Keener had a supporting role as Lt. Cricket
Sideris in the television series, Ohara about an Asian-American detective.
The series ran from January 1987 to May 1988.
Keener's first film appearance was one line in About Last Night....
Although she struggled professionally over the next few years one low-quality project
had an unexpected dividend.
Keener met her future husband, actor Dermot Mulroney in 1987 while working on Survival
Quest, after Mulroney became stuck while attempting to scale a cliff.
She also guest-starred as an artist on an episode of Seinfeld called "The Letter".
She played Jerry's girlfriend, an artist who painted a famous portrait of Kramer.
Keener then earned her first starring role in Johnny Suede with the then unknown Brad
Pitt.
Her performance gained critical acclaim and earned her her first Independent Spirit Award
nomination for Best Female Lead.
She went on to work with director Tom Dicillo, again, in Living in Oblivion.
Two years later, she was once again nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her performance
in Walking and Talking, an independent cult-comedy film directed by Nicole Holofcener.
In 2000, Keener earned her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in
Being John Malkovich, directed by Spike Jonze.
In 2001, she worked with director Nicole Holofcener in Lovely and Amazing garnering her a third
Independent Spirit Award nomination.
In 2002, she co-starred with Edward Norton in the off-Broadway revival of Burn This and
the film Death to Smoochy.
She also took part in the film Full Frontal, and S1m0ne alongside Al Pacino.
In 2005, she made a comeback starring in the political thriller The Interpreter, The Ballad
of Jack and Rose, opposite Daniel Day-Lewis, and was cast as the love interest of Steve
Carell in Judd Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
Keener's performance as writer Harper Lee in Capote earned her several awards and nominations,
including her second Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
In 2006, she starred in the film Friends with Money, directed by Nicole Holofcener.
In 2007, Keener played Jan Burres in Sean Penn's critically acclaimed film Into the
Wild, based on Jon Krakauer's best-selling book of the same name.
In 2008, her film An American Crime, the true story of Gertrude Baniszewski, a middle-aged
mother who tortured and killed Sylvia Likens in her Indiana home, was aired on Showtime.
Keener plays Baniszewski and her portrayal earned her an Emmy nomination in the Best
Actress in a TV Mini-Series or Movie category.
In 2008, Keener portrayed Philip Seymour Hoffman's wife Adele in Charlie Kaufman's directorial
debut, Synecdoche, New York.
She would later collaborate with Hoffman as husband and wife again in the 2012 film A
Late Quartet.
Keener played the title character's mother in the 2010 film Percy Jackson & the Olympians:
The Lightning Thief, based on the series of books by Rick Riordan.
Personal life Keener married actor Dermot Mulroney in 1990.
They have a son, Clyde, born in 1999.
In June 2007, Mulroney filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences.
The divorce became final on December 19, 2007.
Filmography See also
List of people from Miami References
External links Catherine Keener at the Internet Movie Database
Catherine Keener at AllMovie