Newsmaker

Every Friday, we choose an alum who has been making headlines—for better or for worse.
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6/17/11: Frances McDormand ’82MFA

So you think Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are the only actors around who can do a South Boston accent? Oh, right—Wahlberg and DiCaprio and Christian Bale and Amy Adams and…

Apparently Drama School grad Frances McDormand ’82MFA also has the Southie thing down pretty well. McDormand is perhaps still best known for her “singsongy Norwegian-American accent“ (“Yah? Yah, yah”) in Fargo, the 1996 Coen brothers movie. But  this week she snagged a Tony for her performance in Good People, David Lindsay-Abaire’s South Boston drama.

The play—about a financially strapped single mother thrown into confrontation with her old high school boyfriend, now a wealthy doctor—“maps the fault lines of social class with a rare acuity of perception while also packing a substantial emotional wallop,” the Boston Globe says. McDormand was “perhaps … channeling the character” at the Tony ceremonies June 12, where she “caused quite a stir by accepting her award wearing a denim jacket, glasses, and no make-up,” a WBUR blog post reports.

Filed under celebrity, milestones, movies, Theater
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