Mary Jo Deschanel

While acting in TV series’ back in the early 70s, Mary met Caleb Deschanel, a cinematographer who has been nominated for 5 academy award nominations for his brilliant cinematography. The attraction developed on the sets and they dated for some time, before getting married in 1972. The couple had two daughters, Emily Dechanel and Zooey Deschanel, born in 1976 and 1980 respectively. Being from a film-family, both the daughters later went on to make a careers in films and TV and eventually became successful actresses.

Mary Deschanel was born Mary Jo Weir in California in a very affluent family with a strong footing in Hollywood on November 25th 1945. Brought up in Los Angeles, it wasn’t very difficult for her to grow an inclination towards the showbiz industry.

She was initially sceptical about her future though, and did her early schooling and higher education from California. Down the line, while in college, she did some plays and that got her interested in acting and slowly she got really serious about her career and started auditioning for TV shows in the mid 60s.

Her family had a mixture of Irish, French, Swiss, Dutch and English ancestry. This played a major role in shaping up her mindset later in a way, as she was exposed to the American way out of her house while inside the household it was all European vibe.

She struck gold early in her career and started appearing in Television shows and somehow became one of the most popular TV character actresses. Her gorgeous looks made her a diva among the TV stars, and it wasn’t very difficult for her to find a sure shot footing in Hollywood.

After going through several auditions, Mary finally bagged a role in ‘Run for your Life’, a TV series which started airing in mid-60s, a time when neo-noir mysteries were in trend. The series followed the life of a man who comes to know that he has a limited time remaining to live and he sets out to do everything he couldn’t do all those years due to family and career.

‘Run for your Life’ got a warm reception and the actors received a lot of appreciation for their roles and it helped Mary bag another role in ‘High Chaparral’, where she played Ann, in 1968. The series was a moderate success but Mary was getting recognized for all the right reasons.

Thereafter, she played a small role in ‘The Wild Racers’ and went on to do ‘Lancer’ and ‘Here Comes the Bride’ in the next couple of years. This phase was quite frustrating for her as she wasn’t being able to get the roles that would showcase her prowess as an actor. She desired something different and that difference came in form of a TV movie ‘Anatomy of a Crime’, it was a crime drama and Mary played the role of Marcie, which was not the main character, but she had enough screen space to get herself noticed.

Even ‘Anatomy of a Crime’ couldn’t do anything major for her, and Mary decided to take a break from acting to focus on her marriage and personal life. She eventually made a solid comeback in 1983 with film ‘The Right Stuff’, as she managed to get a role in the science fiction film, which revolved around a space expedition to Mercury, in which Mary played an astronaut’s wife, Annie Glenn.

Her next film role was a reflection of Annie’s character from the earlier film and in the 1984 movie ‘2010’ she played Betty Fernandez, Dave Bowman’s wife, who happens to be one of the astronauts on a Jupiter mission. Ever since its release, the film has gained a cult following.