Mercedes Ruehl
(Lorraine Gibbons)

Mercedes Ruehl has led an impressive and varied career in film, television and theater. She earned an Academy Award®, a Golden Globe® and a Los Angeles Film Critics Society Award for her performance opposite Jeff Bridges in Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King. Ruehl first became widely known through her breakthrough film role in Married to the Mob, which earned her a National Society of Film Critics Award. Her additional film credits include Last Action Hero; Crazy People; Slaves of New York; Big, in which she played Tom Hanks' mom; The Secret of My Success; Woody Allen's Radio Days; Leader of the Band; 84 Charing Cross Road; Heartburn; Four Friends; and The Warriors. Ruehl's television credits include the miniseries Widows, the telefilms Guilt by Association and The Mary Kay Letourneau Story: All-American Girl and the series Frasier, in which she had a recurring role as Dr. Frasier Crane's boss/love interest.

On stage, Ruehl won a Tony Award® for her performance as Aunt Bella in Neil Simon's Pulitzer Prize-winning Lost in Yonkers (a role she later reprised in Martha Coolidge's 1993 film version) and won an Obie for her performance in Christopher Durang's The Marriage of Bette and Boo. Her additional theater credits include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in which she starred with Patrick Stewart; Edward Albee's Tony Award®-winning play Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, for which she received a Tony® nomination for Best Actress opposite Bill Pullman; Other People's Money, which earned her a Clarence Derwent Award; The Rose Tattoo; The Shadow Box, for which she also received a Tony® nomination; and the Tony®-winning play I'm Not Rappaport.