Has two brothers - Harry Danner is an opera singer & William is a violin expert.
Aunt of Hillary Danner.
1965 graduate of Bard College
Graduated high school from George School, Newtown, Pennsylvania.
Aunt of actress Katherine Moennig.
She was slated to play the Stockard Channing role in the original stage production of "Six Degrees of Separation", but left the company after a few days of rehearsal.
She has a sister, Dorothy Danner, who is an opera director/choreographer.
Won Broadway's 1970 Tony Award as Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Dramatic) for "Butterflies Are Free." She has been nominated for Tonys three additional times: as Best Actress (Play), in 1980 for Harold Pinter's "Betrayal" and in 1988 for a revival of Tennessee Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire;" and as Best Actress (Musical) in 2001 for a revival of "Follies."
Blythe Danner Detailed Biography
Blythe Danner plays Aurelia Plath in Sylvia. Ms. Danner Danner received a Tony Award for her debut Broadway role, in Leonard Gershe's play Butterflies Are Free. She received subsequent Tony Award nominations for Blanche in Tennesse Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, Emma in Harold Pinter's Betrayal, and Phyllis in Stephen Sondheim's Follies.
She starred as Beatrice opposite Kevin Kline's Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing for the New York Shakespeare Festival. Her other Broadway credits include Linclon Center's The Philadelphia Story, Rounabout Theatre's production of The Deep Blue Sea, and Blithe Spirit. For more than 20 years, she has been a member of the Williamstown Theater Festival, and has also performed at Mark Taper Forum, B.A.M., and the Manhattan Theatre Club. For the latter, she starred in A.R. Gurney's Sylvia (unrelated to Sylvia and Sylvia Plath).
On-screen, Ms. Danner most recently starred opposite Robert De Niro in Jay Roach's comedy Meet the Parents, the sequel of which, Meet the Fockers will be in theaters December 2004. Her other film credits include 1776, The Great Santini, opposite Robert Duvall, Brighton Beach Memoirs, adapted by Neil Simon from his play, Merchant Ivory's Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, with Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand's The Prince of Tides, and three Woody Allen films.
Her many television appearances include PBS adaptations of Chekhov's The Seagull and George Bernard Shaw's Candida. She was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2002 for her performance in Lifetime's We Were the Mulvaneys. She received CableACE Award nominations for her performances in the telefilms A Call to Remember and Judgment. She has a recurring role as Will's mother on the hit NBC comedy Will and Grace.
Ms. Danner drives an electric car and powers it and her home with solar panels. She highly recommends all alternative energies to one and all.
In her role as Aurelia Plath in the biographical drama, Sylvia, she plays opposite her daughter, Gwyneth Paltrow, who stars as the legendary poet and author, Sylvia Plath.
