Why We Love...Mary-Louise Parker

For not taking the money, for not lashing out at Billy Crudup after he dumped her and for that picture with the python - Ms. Parker, we salute you.

By Kate Torgovnick
Published: Dec 24, 2007
Photography by ©Globe Photos

In the early 2000s, Mary-Louise Parker and Billy Crudup seemed like the Hollywood couple that could. They’d been together for years, waving from the red carpet of movie and theater premieres with matching sets of shiny brunette hair and big brown eyes. They came off as the cool couple — the kind who would turn a boring dinner party into a wicked night of 80's power ballad karaoke.

So when they abruptly split in 2003 — with Mary-Louise seven months pregnant and rumors flying that Crudup had left her for the younger, blonder Claire Danes — the world seemed ready to join in a Mary-Louise pity party. Tabloids printed knife-twisting headlines like, “Crudup Ditches Pregnant Parker,” that made people all the more ready to join Team Mary-Louise. Some celebrities might have soaked up the attention, dropping a quote to the press here, ‘accidentally’ being photographed smooching a new guy there, or even calling a surprise star witness in the heated custody battle. But not Mary-Louise. Instead, she laid low. She relished being a mom and headed back to work. Even last January, when, in a moment of poetic justice, Danes dumped Crudup for a younger look-a-like co-star, Mary-Louise stayed hush-hush, ignoring reporters’ bait to bad mouth either of the two.

mary louise And that’s why we love Mary-Louise Parker. We love her for her integrity. We love her for being immune to the Hollywood insanity that’s taken hold of a large number of her peers. We love her for her acting chops. We love her for her Snow White beauty. We love her for being a theater dork. We love her for never taking a role that would make her America’s Sweetheart. We love her for daring to play a pot-dealing soccer mom on Weeds, a show that’s given us water-cooler fodder for months.

Our love affair with Mary-Louise Parker began in 1991, when she kicked the can in Fried Green Tomatoes. It started a long string of movies where she played pitiable characters. Bullets Over Broadway — her husband’s cheating on her. The Client — her son is a witness in a mob trial and everyone wants to kill him. Reckless—she’s deaf and mute. Boys on the Side—she dies again, this time AIDS.

And thus, Mary Louise Parker became known to many as “that dying girl.” Or as the one who’s pretty in a frail way. As she said to Movieline in 1994, “I don’t get parts because of the way I look. I lose parts. I thought I was pretty fucking cute until I got into the movie business.” Also hanging over her head was the fact that people confused her with Mary Stuart Masterson and Sarah Jessica Parker — a trio of actresses who share a bizarre Venn diagram of three part names.

In 1998, Darren Star gave Mary-Louise a chance to bust out of the pack with a lead role on Charmed. Witches, “the power of three,” Alyssa Milano—it’s pretty obvious why Mary-Louise turned it down. Shannen Doherty took the part, and Charmed kicked off as the highest rated show on the WB. It ran for eight seasons, the longest of any show with all-female leads.

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