Harden began her college education at American universities in Europe and returned to the US to complete her studies at the University of Texas in 1983 went on to earn an MFA at NYU, and, thereafter, embarked on her acting career.Īlthough she had acted in a movie as early as 1986, in the little-known The Imagemaker (1986), her first mainstream role, coming alongside some TV movie work, was as a sultry femme fatale in the Coen Brothers' cleverly offbeat homage to the gangster movie, Miller's Crossing (1990). The family relocated often - she first became interested in the theatre when the family was living in Greece, and she had attended plays in Athens. Her mother, Beverly (Bushfield), was a homemaker, and her father, Thad Harold Harden, was in the military. Marcia Gay Harden was born on August 14, 1959, in La Jolla, California, the third of five children.
