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Biography: Annie Potts stars as Mary Elizabeth "M.E." Sims on Lifetime Television's one-hour drama series "Any Day Now." The show, now entering its fourth season, follows the special relationship between two women — Mary Elizabeth Sims, a white homemaker who is married with two children, and a highly successful African-American attorney (Lorraine Toussaint) — who have shared a friendship that dates back to their childhood in the South during the 1960s. Via flashbacks, the Civil Rights Movement is seen through their young eyes. Potts charmed television audiences for seven years as Mary Jo Shively on the long-running CBS hit "Designing Women." She has also delighted fans of the big screen with performances in blockbusters such as "Ghostbusters" and "Toy Story." After "Any Day Now" debuted in August 1998, the Los Angeles Times proclaimed that it was "flat-out the season's best new hour of weekly drama, and one of the most absorbing in all of television." USA Today declared that the show was "graced by a perfectly pitched performance from Annie Potts." For her efforts, Potts received a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series for the past two consecutive years. A 1998 Viewers for Quality Television (VQT) survey found that "Any Day Now" was rated the highest-quality new drama series of the season. On the big screen, Potts lent her voice to the hit of the 1999-2000 holiday season, Disney's "Toy Story II," in which she reprised her role of a Little Bo Peep lamp who is the light of Woody's (Tom Hanks) life. In April 2000, Potts made her New York City stage debut with a two-week stint in Eve Ensler's award-winning play, "The Vagina Monologues." This came after Potts' successful V-Day 2000 performance of the play in Los Angeles, where she shared the stage with Gillian Anderson, Kirstie Alley, Roseanne, Winona Ryder and Rita Wilson, among others. Potts was born in Franklin, Kentucky, and received a bachelor's degree in theater from Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. She began acting in summer stock theater before heading to Los Angeles to further her education in graduate school at the California Institute of the Arts. Once in L.A., she continued to work onstage, where she caught the attention of both critics and casting directors. Soon after, she landed her feature film debut role in the comedy "Corvette Summer," in which she starred opposite Mark Hamill. Her disarming performance as a quirky, would-be prostitute earned her a Golden Globe nomination and immediately established her as one of the most promising talents in the industry. Potts soon lived up to that promise with her starring role in the comedy "Heartaches," for which she was honored with Canada's Genie Award. Critical and audience raves followed for her standout performance as the droll Brooklyn-accented receptionist in Ivan Reitman's smash hit comedy "Ghostbusters." Ironically, her performance was so convincing that the Southern-born actress was almost typecast as "too urban." In 1986, Potts turned that impression on its ear when she debuted in a new CBS series called "Designing Women." Potts starred as one of four women running an interior design firm in Atlanta. "It was groundbreaking. It was one of the first series to star an all-woman cast and to portray women as smart and funny," Potts attests. The show was an immediate hit and went on to enjoy a successful seven-year run, enduring cast evolutions and time-slot changes. Through it all, Potts remained an audience favorite for her multilayered portrayal of Mary Jo, a divorced single mother trying to juggle a career and family. Following "Designing Women," Potts did a two-year stint on CBS' "Love and War" as gourmet chef Dana Palladino. She received an Emmy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance. She also won critical acclaim while starring as Louanne Johnson on the ABC drama "Dangerous Minds." Her gutsy portrayal of the tough Marine-turned-inner-city-teacher garnered her considerable praise, with Newsday proclaiming, "Potts is a powerhouse at the center of it all, a dynamo of spirit and determination." In addition to her television success, Potts has continued to appear in a variety of feature films. She received critical acclaim for her work as Jeff Bridges' wife in "Texasville" (Peter Bogdanovich's follow-up to "The Last Picture Show"), and she also appeared in "Crimes of Passion," "Pretty in Pink," "Who's Harry Crumb?" "Pass the Ammo" and "Breaking the Rules." Television Credits: |
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