Short Biography

Madeleine Stowe (born August 18, 1958) is an American actress and the eldest of three sisters, was born Madeline Mora Stowe in Eagle Rock, a working class suburb of Los Angeles, California. Her mother, Mireya (née Mora), immigrated from Costa Rica and came from a prominent family, and her father, Robert Stowe, a civil engineer, was a native of Oregon. Stowe`s father suffered from multiple sclerosis.

At the age of ten, Stowe began taking piano lessons with the aim of becoming a concert pianist — and also as a way of not having to socialize with other kids. Her Russian-born music teacher Sergei Tarnowsky (he taught Vladimir Horowitz before immigrating to the US), had faith in her, teaching her from his deathbed. But when he died at the age of 96, she quit ("I just felt it was time to not be by myself anymore") — and at 18 she went on her first date. She then studied cinema and journalism at the University of Southern California. Not overly interested in her classes, Stowe volunteered to do performances at the Solaris, a Beverly Hills theater, where a movie agent saw her in a play, and subsequently got her several offers of appearances in TV and films.

Career

For nearly fifteen years Stowe appeared mostly in minor or supporting roles in movies and on TV. A few of her performances from this period became, however, well-known to the public, as was the case for Stakeout (1987), where she played opposite Richard Dreyfuss, and Revenge, (1990), which co-starred Kevin Costner. In 1992 Stowe finally landed a leading role in a high-profile film, playing the part of Cora Munro in The Last of the Mohicans, which also starred Daniel Day-Lewis.

Thereafter, several major film roles followed. The next year, director Robert Altman cast Stowe in Short Cuts, in which she gave one of her most acclaimed screen performances as the wife of a compulsive lying and adulterous police officer played by Tim Robbins. The following year, Madeleine was a blind musician in the thriller Blink, co-starring Aidan Quinn. (Fourteen years earlier, she had a guest role as a blind painter in Little House on the Prairie). The year after that, she was a sympathetic psychiatrist in the science-fiction movie Twelve Monkeys. Stowe postponed her acting career in 1996 to concentrate on motherhood. In 1998, she came back with The Proposition.

She most recently appeared in the Jeff Goldblum detective drama Raines on NBC, a 2007 mid-season replacement. The series was canceled after two months.

Personal life

Stowe has been married to actor Brian Benben since 1982, after meeting when they acted in a TV film the previous year. The couple have a daughter, May (born 1996), and a son. They spend spare time on the ranch they own in Texas.

In December 2007, she endorsed and campaigned for John Edwards in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

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