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Maria Elaine Bello (born April 18, 1967)
is an American actress. Bello was born in Norristown,
Pennsylvania to an Italian American father and a Polish
American mother, She grew up in a working-class Roman
Catholic family and graduated from Archbishop Carroll
High School (Radnor) in Radnor, PA. Later she attended
Villanova University, majoring in political science.
She had every intention of becoming a
lawyer, but took an acting class during her senior year,
just for fun. She was soon cast in small off-Broadway
plays, such as The Killer Inside Me, Small Town Gals
With Big Problems and Urban Planning. She later
guest-starred on episodes of The Commish (1991), Nowhere
Man (1995), Misery Loves Company (1995) and Due South
(1994).
Career: Bello's breakthrough came when producers
Kenny Lenhart and John J. Sakmar cast her as Mrs. Smith
in the spy show Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1996) ; they
remembered her from her performance in a failed pilot
that was a remake of the classic TV series 77 Sunset
Strip (1958). The show was cancelled after just eight
weeks on the air. Then came a guest stint on ER as the
feisty pediatrician Dr. Anna Del Amico, in which she
guest-starred in the final three episodes of the third
season.
The show's producers were so impressed
with her that they asked her back as a regular on the
series. Bello remained on the show for one season,
departing after the medical drama's 4th season. The
actress went on into movies landing a role in Coyote
Ugly. She has been nominated for the Golden Globe award
twice: for Best Supporting Actress in The Cooler (2003)
and for Best Actress in A History of Violence (2005).
Pennsylvania-born Maria Bello went to Villanova
University to be a political science major, but a drama
class altered her career plans. Following college, Bello
honed her acting skills in a number of New York theater
productions before she was cast as the co-lead in the
short-lived TV spy comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1996).
Bello gained major primetime exposure, however, playing
Dr. Anna Del Amico on NBC's top hit ER during the 1997
season and soon jumped to movies with her performance as
recovering junkie Ben Stiller's confidante in Permanent
Midnight (1998).
While Permanent Midnight was not popular, Bello scored
her first hit as Mel Gibson's beautiful cohort in the
harsh crime drama Payback (1999). Poised to potentially
become one of the select group of actors who have made
the transition from TV to film smoothly, Bello
co-starred as one of the bottle-tossing, bar-stomping
babes in charge of the titular drinking establishment in
the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Coyote Ugly (2000).
Active in the arts off-screen as well, Bello co-founded
the Harlem not-for-profit arts and education program,
Dream Yard Drama Project for Kids. After Coyote Ugly
failed to live up to box office hopes, Bello starred as
Ruth Harkness in the IMAX feature based on her
experiences with the eponymous creatures, China: The
Panda Adventure (2001).
Bello finally scored a bona fide critical, if not
financial, hit with Paul Schrader's biopic about
murdered Hogan's Heroes star Bob Crane, Auto Focus
(2002). As Crane's co-star and second wife Patricia,
Bello held her own opposite Greg Kinnear's bravura
performance as the sex addicted Crane, evoking the
complex emotions of a spouse who accepts yet ultimately
cannot live with her husband's demons.
A year after Auto Focus, Bello would score even bigger
with the critics with a starring role alongside William
H. Macy in the gritty Vegas romance The Cooler. As the
cocktail waitress who falls for Macy's sadsack
ne'er-do-well, Bello was rewarded for the extreme
realism she brought to her character and the film with a
Best Supporting Actress nomination from the Screen
Actors Guild and a runner-up prize from The National
Society of Film Critics.
Early in 2004, Bello could be seen with Johnny Depp and
John Turturro in the Stephen King adaptation The Secret
Window. Contrasting that film's luke-warm reviews, Bello
next showed up in director John Sayles' well-received
political thriller Silver City.
Personal life: Bello practices yoga, muay thai
and ballet. Bello and her boyfriend TV executive Dan
McDermott, welcomed their first child, Jackson Blue
McDermott, on March 5, 2001. She is good friends with
actresses Mariska Hargitay and Carrie-Anne Moss. Bello
is the godmother of Moss' first son. Moss is the
godmother of Bello's son Jack. |
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