A large-eyed, slightly baby-faced stage and screen performer McGovern first gained attention as Conrad Jarrett s (Timothy Hutton) supportive and understanding girlfriend in the Oscar-winning Ordinary People (1980). The willowy actress followed with a stunning turn as Evelyn Nesbit in Milos Foreman s adaptation of the E.L.
Doctorow novel Ragtime (1981) netting a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. While subsequent projects found her working with a number of top film directors, she failed to find roles that utilized her unique beauty and challenged her range and talent. She appeared as the object of Robert De Niro s obsession in Sergio Leone s Once Upon a Time in America (1984) and as Kevin Bacon s pregnant wife in John Hughes She s Having a Baby (1988).
In 1989, McGovern offered two diverse performances as Mickey Rourke s sympathetic girlfriend in Walter Hill s Johnny Handsome (1989) and as a rebellious lesbian in Volker Schlondorf s nonsensical thriller The Handmaid s Tale (1989). McGovern fared better in the little seen romantic comedy-drama The Favor (1994) and was featured in the groundbreaking Wings of Courage (1995), Jean-Jacques Annaud s period adventure, the first dramatic film shot in the IMAX 3-D format.
McGovern has been better served in her stage and TV roles, appearing off-Broadway in several productions, notably in Tina Howe s Painting Churches (1989), David Hare s A Map of the World (1990) and Shakespeare s As You Like It at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.
Her TV debut was opposite Beau Bridges in the adaptation of The Man in the Brooks Brothers Suit on the HBO anthology Women Men: Stories of Seduction (1990). She later played an FBI agent in Broken Trust (TNT, 1995). McGovern made the jump to series TV headlining the short-lived sitcom If Not For You (CBS, 1995).
Portraying a woman engaged to a boring yuppie but fighting a growing attraction to a co-worker, she gave a deft and sweetly comic turn. Using her expressive face and throaty voice, she revealed a previously untapped comic sensibility. McGovern married English producer-director Simon Curtis in 1992.
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