Joan Allen

Three-time Oscar-nominee Joan Allen began her career on the stage and won a Tony award for her performance in Burn This in 1988. She has worked with lauded filmmakers Michael Mann, Ang Lee and Oliver Stone over her two decades in cinema.

After graduating from Northern Illinois University in 1976, Allen joined the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where she worked with co-founder Gary Sinise. Though she made her film debut in 1985 in Frank Perry's Compromising Positions, she was more successful on stage in the late 1980s. The year after her Tony Award win, she was nominated for Best Actress again ifor The Heidi Chronicles.

In the 1990s, Allen established herself as a film actress and received Oscar nominations for portraying Pat Nixon in Nixon and Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible. She received her third nomination for playing a United States senator caught in a sexual scandal in The Contender.

"Acting gave me the opportunity to do outrageous things. It allowed me to be sad, happy, angry and lustful even if it was just vicariously." &mdash Joan AllenBrainyQuotes: Joan Allen

"Acting gave me the opportunity to do outrageous things. It allowed me to be sad, happy, angry and lustful even if it was just vicariously." — Joan AllenThinkExist.com: Joan Allen

"Almost any film that you do is an opportunity to open you up and make you more aware of an area that you might not be thinking about. That's what is kind of cool, or one of the cool things about this profession." — Joan AllenThinkExist.com: Joan Allen

• Note: The majority of the links in this timeline are to IMDb, which has pop-ups.

• 1956: Born on August 20

• 1985: Compromising Positions - IMDb Listing | Rotten Tomatoes Reviews

• 1987: Burn This - IMDb Listing

• 1989: Heidi Chronicles - IMDb Listing | Rotten Tomatoes Reviews

• 1993: Searching for Bobby Fisher - IMDb Listing | Rotten Tomatoes Reviews

• 1995: Nixon - IMDb Listing | Rotten Tomatoes Reviews

• 1997: Face Off - IMDb Listing | Rotten Tomatoes Reviews

• 1998: Pleasantville - IMDb Listing | Rotten Tomatoes Reviews

• 2004: The Notebook - IMDb Listing | Rotten Tomatoes Reviews

• 2004: The Bourne Supremacy - IMDb Listing | Rotten Tomatoes Reviews

• 2005: The Upside of Anger - IMDb Listing | Rotten Tomatoes Reviews

• 2007: The Bourne Ultimatum - IMDb Listing | Rotten Tomatoes Reviews

• 2008: Bonneville - IMDb Listing | Rotten Tomatoes Reviews

• 2008: Good Sharma - IMDb Listing

• 2008: Death Race - IMDb Listing | Rotten Tomatoes Reviews