Hope Davis Biography

Hope Davis is an American actress. She has starred in more than 20 feature films, including About Schmidt, Flatliners, Mumford, American Splendor and Next Stop Wonderland.

Personal life
Davis, second of three children, was born in Englewood, New Jersey, the daughter of Joan, a librarian, and William Davis, an engineer. Davis has described her mother as a "great storyteller" who would take Davis and her siblings to museums or to "something cultural" every Sunday after church. Davis graduated in 1982 from Tenafly High School in Tenafly, New Jersey, and was a childhood friend of Mira Sorvino, with whom she wrote and acted in backyard plays.

She is married to actor Jon Patrick Walker. They have two children, Georgia (born August 31, 2002) and Mae (born December 30, 2004).

Film
Davis majored in cognitive science at Vassar College, but then became an actress in independent films such as The Daytrippers (1995) and Next Stop Wonderland (1998). These led her to roles in Hollywood films such as the thriller Arlington Road (1999), and About Schmidt (2002). In 2003, she starred opposite Paul Giamatti in the movie adaptation of the Harvey Pekar comic American Splendor as the comic book version of Pekar's real-life wife, Joyce Brabner. For this role, Davis won the New York Film Critics Circle award and was nominated for the Golden Globe.

Stage
She had lead roles in the New York premiere of Rebecca Gilman's Spinning into Butter in 2000, and in the 2005 audio play "Hope Leaves the Theater", written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. This was a segment of the sound-only production Theater of the New Ear, which debuted at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY. The title actually refers to Hope Davis's character "leaving the theater."

She will return to the stage in 2009, appearing in Broadway's God of Carnage with Marcia Gay Harden, James Gandolfini and Jeff Daniels.