It’s quite the challenge to cap a conversation at 40 minutes when you’re talking to someone like Mary Steenburgen. Not only does she have a filmography loaded with stellar titles, but her journey in the industry is also packed with wildly inspiring and downright incredible experiences. There was her chance meeting with Jack Nicholson that essentially jump-started her career and she also won an Academy Award for her performance in Melvin and Howard, a film that’s nearly impossible to find now.
Steenburgen is a force in front of the lens but fairly recently, she discovered another talent - songwriting - and the story of how she discovered that ability is mind blowing. During this episode of Collider Connected in celebration of Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, Steenburgen told me all about how The Music Man was a major influence when she was young and how her first concert was seeing The Beatles in Texas. She has always been drawn to music and said, “I had some real musical connection but I didn’t suspect that I had anything in there to offer.” Turns out, she did. It just took some “musical weirdness” during surgery for her to access it.
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