WILLIAM H. MACY

William H. Macy was born in Miami, Florida in 1950, but he grew up in Georgia and Maryland. While at college in the late 1960s, he experimented with many drugs, including LSD, as did many other college students at that time! He transferred to Goddard College in Vermont, and started in the theater there, and also met David Mamet, who he studied under. After graduation, he moved to Chicago and sometimes acted and also worked as a bartender. A couple of years later, he, Mamet, and writer Steven Schachter founded the St. Nicholas Theater Company, and there Macy appeared in a number of plays, including Mamet's American Buffalo. Macy moved first to Los Angeles, where he had little success breaking into movies, and then to New York in 1980, where he managed to get over 50 roles in plays, both on Broadway, and off-Broadway. In 1985, he and Mamet co-founded the Atlantic Theater Company in New York City. In the early 1990s, he began to have much more success in movies, usually being cast as an "Everyman" type, or as a "loser". His most notable roles include playing Vice Principal Wolters in Mr. Holland's Opus, Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo (for which he was nominated for an Oscar), Little Bill in Boogie Nights, James Gordon in A Civil Action, and Donnie Smith in Magnolia, all in the 1990s! In recent years, he has done some much more commercial movies, including Wild Hogs, and its sequel, and in 2003, at the age of 53, he got to star in The Cooler, opposite sexy Maria Bello! He also has done much TV, including a recurring role on the top rated ER, as David Morgenstern. In 1982, when Macy was 32, he met 20 year old Felicity Huffman, who was his acting student. They lived together for 15 years, before marrying in 1997, and they had two daughters, born in 2000, and 2002. Huffman is of course best known for her starring role on TV's "Desperate Housewives".