Molly Parker Biography, Celebrity Facts, Childhood and Achievements

Quick Facts

Molly Parker is a Canadian born international actress who has featured in several movies and television series both in Canada and in the United States. She is prominent for her role as House Majority Whip, Jacqueline Sharp on the thriller series, House of Cards. 

Parker won the Genie Award as the Best Actress in a Leading Role; this was for her role in 1997’s Kissed. Also, she has earned nominations for the same award twice and won again in 2002 for her performance in Last Wedding (2001).

Other nominations include the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead in 2001 for her role as Florence in The Center of the World; and an Emmy nomination for the HBO series, Deadwood. 

Molly Parker Biography and Childhood

Molly Parker was born on June 30, 1972, in Maple Ridge, Canada and raised along with her younger brother Henry Parker, in a farm by her parents who operated a seafood retail store. She attended ballet classes from age three to 17.

Parker had a smooth childhood, she grew up amongst parents and family who supported her in every way. After graduating from high school, she enrolled for a three-year course at Vancouver’s Gastown Actors’ Studio and also took supplementary voice and singing lessons.

Her interest in acting piqued at the age of 14 and she was involved in her high school plays and drama club activities. Molly Parker’s choice of career was also influenced by her uncle who’s an actor and introduced her to his agent. She started attending auditions and within a few years, she was getting minor roles in movies and television series. This was how she landed her roles in American TV shows airing in Vancouver.

Achievements

Few years into the screen with minor roles to her credit, Molly Parker got her big break in the 1996 low-budget independent feature film, Kissed which garnered her the Genie Award.

Thereafter, she appeared in a slew of short films from 1992 to 1998 including Hate Mail, The Chain, and From Morning on I Waited Yesterday. Others include Just One of the Girls (1993), Hard Core Logo (1996), Bliss (1997), and Under Heaven (1998). As a versatile actress that she is, Parker displayed her comedic prowess as one of the casts of CBC-TV’s sitcom Twitch City (1998-2000).

Parker featured in two movies for the year 2000, Waking the Dead and Suspicious River. With her skills and elegance that radiates on screen, she continued to get multiple movies projects each year. She featured in four movies in 2001, followed by five films in 2002.

For her role in Last Wedding (2001) and in the British/Canadian co-production War Bride (2001), Parker earned two nominations for Best Supporting Actress at the Genies – of which she bagged one.

She made waves with The Center of the World (2001), in which she portrayed a San Francisco lap dancer who became a paid escort to a Silicon Valley nerd. Her outstanding performance got her a nomination for an Independent Spirit Award.

In one of her interviews, she described her work on Trigger (2010) as a gift and a profound experience. The same year, she featured on Oliver Sherman. Molly Parker has played major roles in more than 80 movies and her latest projects include TV series and films like Heritage Minutes (2105), the Amazon Video series Goliath (2016), Wormwood (2017), and Lost in Space (2018).

In 2017, she won the Canadian Screen Awards.

Celebrity Facts

1. Molly Parker played the wife of Joel Bissonnette’s character in Suspicious River (2000). He later became her brother-in-law.

2. She married and divorced Matt Bissonnette who is a director, writer, and producer. They wedded in 2002 and their son William Strummer Bissonnette was born in Los Angeles, California on October 13, 2006. Ten years into the marriage, they called it quit citing irreconcilable differences.

3. Parker and her husband requested for joint custody of their son in the court and neither of them pays spousal support.

4. Parker revealed that she was pregnant in the third season of Deadwood (2004-2006), which was filmed in California during the summer. According to her, the smell at the movie location was awful and left her with strong memories.

5. Her net worth is estimated at $2 million and she owns a Spanish-styled bungalow in Los Angeles at the Echo Park area which she listed for sale in 2017 for less than $900,000.

Also Read: Top 10 Richest People in the world with full biography and details.