Mary Elizabeth Clarke is an American actor. Born in Harlem, she was raised in Brooklyn, New York City. Her professional career began when she was cast in the television show, Growing up, playing the role of a young girl in her first major role. From this role, she went on to play different characters in different TV shows such as ER, Frasier and Cheers. Then in the late eighties, she appeared in the movie The Perfect Score, playing the role of Ginger Aldrich. Then in the nineties, she again played a prominent character in the movie, Dudes by Adam Sandler.
Mary Elizabeth Clarke’s most well-known roles are in movies that portray the life of a middle-aged woman who has moved from working in an upper-class position in her younger years to a lower-class one in her older years. She played the role of a thirty-something mother who is trying to balance her marriage with raising her daughter. She has gone on to play the wife of a well-off man in The Heartbreak Kid, the prom queen in As Good As It Gets, and the mom in Swing Vote. All these roles earned her four Academy Award nominations. The role of Ginger Aldrich in the movie The Perfect Score earned her two Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and she shared the same award with Gene Hackman for his work in Cubicle Zoo.
As an actor, Mary Elizabeth Clarke has also managed to find work in the smaller, yet equally important, world of theatre. She has played the lead role in Several Layers, which were performed by Broadway itself, as well as the role of the manipulative matron in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. However, her most important role to date would be as the spouse and wife of an aging millionaire played by Guy Pierce in the film version of Pride and Prejudice. Her character, Miss Watson, is compared quite favorably with the Watson character of Bridget Jones from the Harry Potter books, since both are highly caring and empathetic and care deeply about their partners’ feelings. Both of them rise to the occasion, and in the end, prove to be more capable, stable, and loving than their early years.