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William Hall Macy (born March 13, 1950) is an Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated American actor, known for his role as Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo. He is also a teacher and director in theatre, film and television. Macy has described his screen persona as "sort of a Middle American, WASPy, Lutheran kind of guy... Everyman".[1]
BiographyEarly lifeMacy was born in Miami, Florida and grew up in Georgia and Maryland. His father, also named William Hall Macy, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and an Air Medal for flying a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber in World War II; he later ran a construction company in Atlanta and worked for Dun & Bradstreet before taking over a Cumberland, Maryland-based insurance agency when Macy was nine years old. His mother, Lois, was a war widow who met Macy's father after her first husband died in 1943; Macy has described her as a "Southern belle".[2] Macy has a half-brother, Fred Merrill, from his mother's first marriage.
CareerAfter spending some time in Los Angeles, California, he moved to New York in 1980. While living there he had roles in over fifty off-Broadway and Broadway plays. His first on-screen role was as a turtle named Socrates in the direct to video film, The Boy Who Loved Trolls (1984), under the name W. H. Macy. He has appeared in films that Mamet wrote and/or directed, such as House of Games, Things Change, Homicide, Oleanna (playing a role he reprised after originating the role in the play of the same name, and more recently, Wag the Dog, State and Main, and Spartan. Macy may be best known for his lead role in Fargo, in a role for which he was nominated for an Academy Award and helped shift his career into overdrive. His film work also includes Benny & Joon, Above Suspicion, Mr. Holland's Opus, Ghosts of Mississippi, Air Force One, Boogie Nights, Pleasantville, Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho, Happy, Texas, Mystery Men, Magnolia, Jurassic Park III, Focus, Panic, Welcome to Collingwood, Seabiscuit, The Cooler, and Sahara. Macy has also had a number of roles on television, the most recent being a guest appearance on The Unit as the President of the United States. In 2003, he won two Emmy Awards, one for starring in the lead role and one as co-writer of the made-for-TNT film Door to Door. Door to Door is a drama based on the true story of Bill Porter, a door-to-door salesman in Portland, Oregon, born with cerebral palsy. The film is composed of several stories, each taking up a whole period between commercials.
In a November 2003 interview with USA Today, Macy stated that he wants to star in a big-budget action movie "for the money, for the security of a franchise like that". He serves as director-in-residence at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York, where he teaches a technique called Practical Aesthetics. A book describing the technique, A Practical Handbook for the Actor (ISBN 0-394-74412-8), is dedicated to Macy and Mamet. Macy's most recently acclaimed work is entitled "Wild Hogs," a film about middle-aged men reliving their youthful days by taking to the open road on their Harley-Davidson motorcycles from Cincinnati to the Pacific Coast. Oddly enough, Macy's character was typecast as a geeky sort of ne'er-do-well who did not quite seem to have it all together. Personal lifeSince 1997, Macy has been married to Academy Award nominated actress Felicity Huffman. The couple have two daughters, Sofia Grace and Georgia Grace. They live in Los Angeles, California, and have had a cabin in Vermont since the 1980s. Macy is a Lutheran.[3] He is known for his liberal leanings; he and Huffman appeared at a rally for John Kerry in 2004.[4][5] Macy also plays the ukulele. He is a national ambassador for UCP.[6] Macy has commented on the behaviour of actress Lindsay Lohan:"You can't show up late... It's very, very disrespectful. I think what an actor has to realize (is that) when you show up an hour late, 150 people have been scrambling to cover for you... There is not an apology big enough in the world to have to make 150 people scramble. It's nothing but disrespect. And Lindsay Lohan is not the only one. A lot of actors show up late as if they're God's gift to the film. It's inexcusable, and they should have their asses kicked... I worry about these young kids - 15, 18, 20 years old - who in the span of one year become millionaires and powerhouses. It's too much power for a kid that age to handle". Macy in popular cultureAmerican post-punk/pop dance band, Head Automatica, perform a song entitled 'I Shot William H. Macy', appearing on their 2004 album, Decadence. During their recent 2006 'Lashings of Lucifer' tour amongst many big name bands including Taking Back Sunday and Angels and Airwaves, upon playing this song, crowds replied with cheers and shouts of "hang H. Macy" ala The Smiths' 1986 single, 'Panic'. There is also a popular joke from The Colbert Report in which Stephen Colbert combines Macy and his wife's name into "Filliam H. Muffman", as a jab at celebrity couples getting nicknamed by the media. FilmographyThis list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
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