Marsha Mason (born April 3, 1942) is an American actress and theatre director. She has been nominated four times for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Goodbye Girl (1977), Chapter Two (1979), and Only When I Laugh (1981). The first two also won her Golden Globe Awards. She was married for 10 years (1973–1983) to the playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon, who wrote all but the first film cited above, in addition to several others in which she starred.
Mason's film debut was in the 1966 film Hot Rod Hullabaloo. Her other films include Blume in Love (1973), The Cheap Detective (1978), Max Dugan Returns (1983), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), Stella (1990) and Drop Dead Fred (1991). On television, she appeared in the soap opera Love of Life (1971–72) and received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for her recurring role on the sitcom Frasier (1997–98).
She has also had an extensive career on stage, making her Broadway debut as a replacement in the comedy Cactus Flower in 1968. She starred in a 1999 revival of The Prisoner of Second Avenue in London, and received a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album for the 2000 recording. In 2006, she starred in the American premiere production of Hecuba at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Her other Broadway credits include The Night of the Iguana (1996), Steel Magnolias (2005), and Impressionism (2009).
Mason guest starred in Madam Secretary (2015–16) and The Good Wife (2016), and had recurring roles on the ABC sitcom The Middle from 2010 to 2017 and the Netflix series Grace and Frankie from 2016 until its conclusion in 2022.
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Career
After seeing her 1973 film debut in Blume in Love, Neil Simon cast Mason in his Broadway play The Good Doctor. Shortly afterwards, Mason and Simon, a widower, fell in love and got married. That same year, Mason played pool-hustling hooker Maggie Paul alongside James Caan in the 20th Century Fox film Cinderella Liberty, for which she received her first Academy Award nomination. In 1977, Mason's performance as former Broadway dancer Paula McFadden in Simon's smash hit film, The Goodbye Girl, netted her a second Academy Award nomination. In 1979, Simon successfully cast Mason as the vivacious, recent-divorced actress Jennie MacLaine in the screen adaptation of his hit play Chapter Two, which was based on Mason's relationship with Simon up to their marriage. The film proved to be another big hit, garnering her a third Academy Award nomination.
In 1981, Mason starred along with Kristy McNichol, James Coco, and Joan Hackett in Only When I Laugh, Simon's film adaptation of his Broadway dramedy The Gingerbread Lady; it was another box-office success. For her performance as struggling alcoholic actress Georgia Hines, Mason was highly praised and earned a fourth Academy Award nomination.
Mason's Max Dugan Returns (1983), also written by Simon, grossed a modest $17.6 million at the box office. Despite a stellar cast led by Mason, Donald Sutherland, Jason Robards and Matthew Broderick, the film was a slow starter, becoming more popular after premiering on cable TV and VHS. By this time, Mason and Simon had divorced, and her film career lost momentum. She co-starred with Clint Eastwood in the 1986 film Heartbreak Ridge, which was fairly well received and a commercial success. Mason also played a supporting role in the 1990 motion picture Stella starring Bette Midler, a remake of the 1937 film Stella Dallas.
Mason played in a New York production of Harold Pinter's Old Times. She next directed the play Juno's Swans (1986), by E. Katherine Kerr, at the Second Stage Theatre in Los Angeles.
Her stage credits include Norman Mailer's The Deer Park, Israel Horovitz's The Indian Wants the Bronx, Neil Simon's The Good Doctor and Joseph Papp's 1974 Richard III at the Lincoln Center. Mason starred on Broadway in a revival of Night of the Iguana in 1996, and the following year in Michael Cristofer's Amazing Grace. Mason reunited with Goodbye Girl co-star Richard Dreyfuss and writer Neil Simon in Duncan Weldon and Emanuel Azenberg's production of The Prisoner of Second Avenue in 1999, which was performed at the L.A. Theatre Works shortly after a revival in London's West End. She earned a Grammy nomination in comedy.
Personal life
Mason was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 3, 1942, to Jacqueline Helena (Rakowski) and James Joseph Mason, a printer. She and her younger sister, Mary Melinda (1943 - 2022), were raised Roman Catholic and grew up in Crestwood. Mason is a graduate of Nerinx Hall High School and Webster University, both in Webster Groves. While at Webster, she performed in a variety of theatrical productions. She raced a Mazda RX-3 in SCCA events.
Mason was married to actor Gary Campbell from 1965 until they divorced in 1970. Her second marriage, to playwright Neil Simon, lasted from 1973 until their 1983 divorce.
A former long-time resident of New Mexico, Mason had a farm in Abiquiu that grew certified organic herbs. In the late 1990s, Mason sold herbs wholesale to companies both locally and regionally before starting a line of wellness and bath and body products called "Resting in the River". Now based in New York City, in 2018 she completed building a home on a hayfield in Litchfield County, Connecticut, where she currently resides. Mason has frequently visited Eastern countries like India for many decades and has been a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation since 1970.