Mary McDonnell Sneakers (1992)

Mary McDonnell (born April 28, 1952, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania) played Liz in Sneakers (1992) — Bishop's ex-girlfriend, a music teacher who is recruited to help locate Cosmo and ends up running a key scene of the heist.

Liz is a small part written and played for what it is

Liz appears in roughly fifteen minutes of Sneakers, and the film never explains the romantic backstory beyond what the actors imply. The decision to cast McDonnell, fresh off the Best Actress nomination for Dances with Wolves (1990) and another nomination forthcoming for Passion Fish (1992), was a statement that the part deserved a serious actress.

"The part of Liz could have disappeared. McDonnell makes it the moral counter-weight to Cosmo. She's the person Bishop's lying to, and you feel the cost of it." — Janet Maslin, The New York Times (1992)

The dinner-with-Werner-Brandes sequence — McDonnell on a date with Stephen Tobolowsky's mathematician while feeding voice samples back to the team — is the script's deftest scene-within-a-scene, and McDonnell carries it.

"Watch the way McDonnell holds her face during that dinner. She's playing four levels of attention at once. It's masterful." — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture (2017)

The early-1990s run was historic

In a stretch of three years, McDonnell drew two Best Actress Oscar nominations and starred in Sneakers and Grand Canyon (1991). Her later television work — Battlestar Galactica (2004–09) as President Laura Roslin, Major Crimes (2012–18) as Captain Sharon Raydor — gave her two of the defining adult-female leads of 21st-century cable drama.

Selected filmography

Year	Film	Notes
1990	Dances with Wolves	Best Actress nomination
1991	Grand Canyon	Lawrence Kasdan
1992	Sneakers	Liz
1992	Passion Fish	Best Actress nomination
1996	Independence Day	First Lady
2003	Mumford
2004–09	Battlestar Galactica (TV)	Laura Roslin
2012–18	Major Crimes (TV)	Sharon Raydor