Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (born 1958) is a singer as well as an actress and came to film from the stage, making her Broadway debut in the 1980 revival of West Side Story. Her earliest film credit is Gina in Scarface (1983), a breakout that could easily have fixed her as somebody's sister for good. Instead she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress three years later as Carmen in The Color of Money.

She has a specific gift the roles kept finding: she plays the most competent person in the room, and the impatience that goes with it. Lindsey Brigman in The Abyss spends the film arguing with a rig full of men who are wrong and never softens it for likeability. Marian in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is written as an ornament and played as an obstacle. Even Carmen, the part that brought the Oscar nomination, is played as somebody quietly keeping score. The stage training shows in the voice, which does not need volume to close a scene.

Film work thinned out in the 2000s and television took over, which suited her: Kelly Burkhardt on Grimm, Naz Pouran on Limitless, Madeline Burke on Blindspot, Marion James on Marvel's The Punisher, plus arcs on Law and Order: Criminal Intent and Without a Trace. In 2003 she went back to Broadway and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for the revival of Man of La Mancha.