Mary Stuart Masterson

Mary Stuart Masterson was born in New York City to writer/director Peter Masterson and actress Carlin Glynn. She has two siblings: Peter and Alexandra Masterson, who are both involved in the entertainment industry. As a teen, she attended Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in upstate New York with actors Robert Downey, Jr. and Jon Cryer. Later, she attended schools in New York, including eight months studying anthropology at New York University.

Masterson's first movie appearance was in the original movie The Stepford Wives (1975) at the age of eight. Rather than continue her career, she chose to continue her studies, though she did appear in several productions at the Dalton School. In 1985, she returned to the big screen in Heaven Help Us as Danni, a rebellious high school drop-out who runs a soda fountain. She appears in the movie At Close Range (1986) as Brad Jr's girlfriend Terry, a film based on the real life rural Pennsylvania crime family led by Bruce Johnston, Sr. which operated during the 1960s and 1970s. She later starred as the tomboyish drumming Watts in the teenage drama Some Kind of Wonderful (1987). As a result, she is loosely connected with the Brat Pack. That same year Francis Ford Coppola cast her in Gardens of Stone where she was able to act alongside her parents, who Coppola had hired to act as her on-screen parents for the film. In 1989, she starred as Lucy Moore, a teenage girl giving up her first baby to a wealthy couple, played by Glenn Close and James Woods in Immediate Family. For her work in the film she received a "Best Supporting Actress" award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.
Masterson continued acting in both films and television during the '90s. In 1991, she starred in Fried Green Tomatoes, a film based on the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. The film was well received with film critic Roger Ebert applauding Masterson's work on the film. The following year she was invited to host Saturday Night Live. In 1993 she played opposite Johnny Depp in Benny & Joon as Joon, his mentally unstable love interest. The following year Masterson acted in Bad Girls, playing Anita Crown, a former prostitute, who joins with three other former prostitutes (played by Madeleine Stowe, Andie MacDowell and Drew Barrymore) in traveling the Old West. In 1996, Masterson acted alongside Christian Slater in the romantic drama Bed of Roses.
Although Masterson carried on her work in the film industry, by 2000 she had made a move towards television. In 2001, she produced her own television series Kate Brasher. The show received mediocre reviews and was canceled by CBS after six episodes. In 2004, Masterson starred in the Emmy and Peabody award winning HBO-biopic Something the Lord Made. By 2004, she began guest starring on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Dr. Rebecca Hendrix.
Masterson has also appeared on the stage, being nominated for a 2003 Tony Award as "Best Featured Actress in a Musical" in the Maury Yeston musical Nine: The Musical, directed by David Leveaux.
In 2001, she began her directing career with a segment called "The Other Side" in the television movie On the Edge.
However, Masterson made her big-screen directorial debut with the 2007 film The Cake Eaters. The film premiered at the Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival as well as the Ashland Independent Film Festival where it received awards for "Best Picture." Of her move to directing, Masterson said in an interview: ""When I signed to do this, I wasn't scared but, yes, it was scary. I'm already 40, although we don't want to talk about that. In '92, I wrote my first screenplay, which I then was to direct, but I ended up taking an acting job because it takes forever to get a movie made."