Talk about a MILF. Whether she’s juggling a pot-selling business with suburban parenting as Nancy Botwin on Showtime’s Weeds or balancing her shooting schedules with the feeding schedules of her toddlers William and Ash in real life, Mary-Louise Parker has never looked better. But it’s not just a stunning red carpet presence and astounding facility for dialogue that’s earned her a long-standing and loyal gay following.
When the actor is forced to generalize about why she connects with gay audiences—and gay writers and directors—so well, she offers some insight: “I’ve always felt like one of those people who is a little to the left of the dial. And I never felt like I fit in until I got to drama school with other kids who were the freaks of their towns, searching for something else because they didn’t fit in with the norm. That was me.”
From her first major film role in 1990’s groundbreaking AIDS drama Longtime Companion (“The only time I’ve taken a job in my life where I didn’t read the script—somebody had to make that movie and I wanted to be part of it”) to the sapphic-suggestive Fried Green Tomatoes and Boys on the Side to her recent Emmy-winning turn in Angels in America, Mary-Louise Parker has also never shied away from gay-themed projects.