Carrie Coon Almost Threw Out Her Wedding Gown

Since Carrie Coon’s Tony-nominated Broadway breakthrough, five years ago, as Honey in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the Ohio-bred actress has anchored two prestige television dramas, playing no-nonsense police chief Gloria Burgle on the latest iteration of FX’s Fargo, and wrenching hearts as Nora Durst, a grief-hardened mother, on HBO’s dystopian epicThe Leftovers. Given her bravura performances—Fargo netted her an Emmy nomination this year, in the same category as Nicole Kidman and Jessica Lange—it is not surprising that she was recruited by Steven Spielberg to co-star opposite Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in The Post,the upcoming film aboutThe Washington Post’s role in exposing the classified Pentagon Papers, in 1971. (Coon plays reporter Meg Greenfield, with Streep as publisher Kay Graham and Hanks as editor Ben Bradlee.) It is surprising, though, that the 36-year-old Coon—who is married to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Tony-winning actor Tracy Letts—has so far refused to leave her Chicago home for the more industry-friendly hubs of Los Angeles and New York. Ahead, the biographical makeup of Carrie Coon—midwestern jewel among movie stars.

SHE GREW up on five acres of farmland in Copley, Ohio—a small town west of Akron where her father’s Alsatian family has lived since the 1800s.

HER MOTHER, Paula, an emergency-room nurse, and her father, John, a janitor at an art museum, grew up on the same street and have been married 38 years. They live about a mile away from Coon’s paternal grandparents, who have been married 70 years.

THE THIRD-ELDEST of five children, Coon has three biological brothers and one sister, who was adopted from El Salvador.

SHE DISCOVERED sports (soccer and track) long before acting. In fact, she auditioned for her first play—her high school’s production of Our Town—on a whim while waiting for soccer practice. She got the lead.

THE ATHLETE does some of her own stunts—intentionally, like hurling herself down a hill on The Leftovers, or accidentally, like falling off a ladder and face-planting in full period costume during a performance of George Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

THE AUDIENCE was stunned, but Coon’s family wasn’t. Her occasional inelegance long ago earned her the nickname “Messy Bessy.”

SHE FELL again in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but for co-star Letts, who played George. Their “showmance” bloomed as the production traveled from Chicago to Washington, D.C., to Broadway.

LETTS WON a Tony for his performance. But it was Coon’s surprise nomination that sent Letts, 15 years her elder, into ecstatic fits of fist-pumping. “It was so unanticipated,” Coon says. “I had started the play in Chicago and nobody ever gets famous in Chicago. . . . My life at that time was such a fairy tale.”

THEIR COURTHOUSE-WEDDING plan, months later, was foiled when Letts underwent emergency gallbladder surgery. Rather than postpone, Letts and Coon simply changed venues.

THEY WED in the Northwestern Memorial Hospital room where Letts was recovering.

THE BRIDE wore leggings and a T-shirt. The groom wore a hospital gown and painkiller haze.

WHILE CLEANING her closet a year later, Coon nearly disposed of a worn red T-shirt—until Letts reminded her it was her wedding gown.

THEY LIVE in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago in a three-story modern home Letts purchased after the success of his play August: Osage County.

THE COUPLE daydreams about life outside of Chicago. “We contemplate, if we were to have kids, could we raise them in New York City? That feels like a crazy question . . . but I was barefoot until I was 15.”

INCREDIBLY, SHE didn’t set foot in Los Angeles until she was 33—when summoned by director David Fincher for Gone Girl callbacks.

UNABLE TO afford lodging, Coon stayed with friends and their lovely but boisterous children—until Letts surprised her on audition eve with a hotel room.

SHE GOT the part—playing Ben Affleck’s on-screen sister—and remembers the night of silence and solitude as being one of the best gifts she’s ever received.

DESPITE HER impressive résumé, Coon still drives a 2015 gray Toyota Camry and thinks in terms of sweat-wicking cotton rather than couture: “To have more than one pair of tennis shoes or one sports bra still feels like an extravagance.”

THOUGH SHE’S “astonished” by her glowing reviews and recognition, the feedback she considers most meaningful comes from Copley, Ohio—not Hollywood. “When my mom and dad call after seeing me in something and say, ‘I really forgot that was you’ . . . that’s the best compliment I could ever get, because they brought me into the world and know me better than anyone.”

Get Vanity Fair’s HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Julie MillerJulie Miller is a Senior Hollywood writer for Vanity Fair’s website.

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