Julianna Margulies makes capable women interesting by letting us see how much they keep to themselves. We rate her particularly highly in busy television ensembles, where her restraint gives us someone worth watching amid the commotion.
Fi1m perspective
Watch how little Julianna Margulies needs to do to hold our attention: a pause, a small change of expression, a silence allowed to last. In ER (1994), her Carol Hathaway belongs among busy colleagues without having to compete with them. We rate her highly for this, particularly in a programme where the work feels difficult and the people doing it remain fallible. She rewards attention even when the programme has several other things demanding it.
Hathaway is the head nurse, and Margulies keeps the professional demands and the private person equally worth following. George Clooney gives Doug Ross a charm that can become a nuisance; Anthony Edwards supplies a steadier presence as Mark Greene. The crowded storytelling can wear us down, but these actors give us reasons to stay with colleagues we might not choose as friends. We felt grateful for Margulies's restraint in ER, because her refusal to compete for attention gave us a little relief from the bustle.
After six seasons of ER, she moved into film, theatre and miniseries work. That stretch includes the horror film Ghost Ship (2002), in which she played Maureen Epps. The return to leading television came with Alicia Florrick in The Good Wife (2009–2016), alongside Josh Charles. Its seven seasons gave her understated acting time to follow a character's gradual changes, rather than having to make each one immediately obvious. This is work that benefits from being watched patiently, with an eye for the hesitation before an answer.
Later roles include Laura Peterson in The Morning Show (2019), continuing a career often centred on intelligent professional women. The reservation is that such coolness can keep us waiting for a more direct expression of feeling. In ER, the surrounding activity makes her quietness especially welcome. Start there if the prospect of spending an evening among busy colleagues does not sound too much like an extension of the working day.
Biography
Julianna Margulies is an American actress. She earned a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and began her career with theatre productions and small film and television roles.
She is known for portraying nurse Carol Hathaway in the medical drama series ER (1994–2000, returning in 2009), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Margulies later played Alicia Florrick in the legal drama The Good Wife (2009–2016), also serving as a producer on the series. For this role she received two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, a Golden Globe Award and multiple Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Across her television work she has won three Primetime Emmy Awards and eight Screen Actors Guild Awards.
