William H. Macy

His mother, Lois (née Overstreet; 1920–2001), was a war widow who met Macy's father after her first husband died in 1943.

Macy has described her as a "Southern belle".

His father, William Hall Macy Sr. (1922–2007), was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and an Air Medal for flying a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber in World War II.

He later ran a construction company in Atlanta, Georgia, and worked for Dun & Bradstreet before taking over a Cumberland, Maryland-based insurance agency when Macy was nine years old.

William Hall Macy Jr. (born March 13, 1950) is an American actor.

His film career has been built on appearances in small, independent films, though he has also appeared in mainstream films.

Macy graduated from Allegany High School in Cumberland, Maryland, in 1968.

He went on to Bethany College in West Virginia, where he studied veterinary medicine.

A "wretched student" by his own admission, he transferred to Goddard College in rural Vermont, where he studied under playwright David Mamet, and graduated in 1972.

He studied theater at HB Studio in New York City.

After graduating from Goddard, Macy originated roles in a number of plays by collaborator David Mamet, such as American Buffalo and The Water Engine.

While in Chicago in his twenties, he did a TV commercial.

He was required to join AFTRA in order to do the commercial, and received his SAG card within a year, which for an elated Macy represented an important moment in his career.

Macy spent time in Los Angeles before moving to New York City in 1980, where he had roles in over fifty Off Broadway and Broadway plays.

One of his earliest on-screen roles was as a theater critic congratulating Christopher Reeve in 1980's Somewhere In Time, under the name W.H. Macy, so as not to be confused with the actor Bill Macy.

Another memorable early performance was as a turtle named Socrates in the direct-to-video film The Boy Who Loved Trolls (1984).

He had a minor role as a hospital orderly on the sitcom Kate & Allie in the fourth-season episode "General Hospital", and played an assistant district attorney in "Everybody's Favorite Bagman", the first produced episode of Law & Order.

In both appearances, he was billed as W. H. Macy.

He has appeared in numerous films that Mamet wrote and/or directed, such as House of Games, Things Change, Homicide, Oleanna (reprising the role he originated in the play of the same name), Wag the Dog, State and Main and Spartan.

Macy's leading role in Fargo helped boost his career and recognizability, though at the expense of nearly confining him to a narrow typecast of a worried man down on his luck.

Other Macy roles of the 1990s and 2000s included Benny & Joon, Above Suspicion, Mr. Holland's Opus, Ghosts of Mississippi, Air Force One, Boogie Nights, A Civil Action, Pleasantville, Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho, Happy, Texas, Mystery Men, Magnolia, Jurassic Park III, Focus, Panic, Welcome to Collinwood, Seabiscuit, The Cooler and Sahara.

His work on ER and Sports Night has also been recognized with Emmy nominations.

His starring roles include those in Fargo (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), Mystery Men (1999), Jurassic Park III (2001), Cellular (2004), Bobby (2006), Wild Hogs (2007), and Shorts (2009).

Macy has won two Emmy Awards and four Screen Actors Guild Awards, while his performance in Fargo earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Macy has been married to Felicity Huffman since 1997.

Macy was born in Miami, Florida, and grew up in Georgia and Maryland.

In a November 2003 interview with USA Today, Macy stated that he wanted to star in a big-budget action film "for the money, for the security of a franchise like that. And I love big action-adventure movies. They're way cool."

He serves as director-in-residence at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York, where he teaches a technique called Practical Aesthetics.

A book describing the technique, A Practical Handbook for the Actor (ISBN 0-394-74412-8), is dedicated to Macy and Mamet.

In 2007, Macy starred in Wild Hogs, a film about middle-aged men reliving their youthful days by taking to the open road on their Harley-Davidson motorcycles from Cincinnati to the Pacific Coast.

Despite being critically panned, with a 14% "rotten" rating from Rotten Tomatoes, it was a financial success, grossing over $168 million.

The film also reunited him with his A Civil Action costar, John Travolta.

In June 2008, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce announced Macy and his wife, Felicity Huffman, would each receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the upcoming year.

Piven suddenly and unexpectedly dropped out of the play in December 2008 after he experienced health problems.

Norbert Leo Butz covered the role from December 23, 2008, until Macy took over the part.

In 2009, Macy completed filming on The Maiden Heist, a comedy that co-starred Morgan Freeman and Christopher Walken.

On January 13, 2009, Macy replaced Jeremy Piven in David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow on Broadway.

Dirty Girl, which starred Macy along with Juno Temple, Milla Jovovich, Mary Steenburgen and Tim McGraw, premiered September 12, 2010, at the Toronto International Film Festival.

In summer 2010, Macy joined the Showtime pilot Shameless as the antagonist, Frank Gallagher.

From 2011 to 2021, he played Frank Gallagher, a main character in Shameless, the Showtime adaptation of the British television series.