Margaret Whitton began her career onstage in New York, performing off-Broadway in “Baba Goya” (1973) and “Nourish the Beast” (1973). She made her Broadway debut in “Steaming” (1982). She also impressed in films, effectively cast as sexy and strong supporting characters in such movies as the prison drama Love Child (1982), the football dramedy The Best of Times (1986) with Robin Williams and Kurt Russell, and especially her breakout role in The Secret of My Success (1987) in which she nearly stole the movie from Michael J. Fox as his character’s hard-as-nails aunt. She complemented this success with a hilarious role as scheming widow-cum-baseball-team owner Rachel Phelps in Major League (1989) and its sequel, and as the resilient mother to young Nick Stahl in Mel Gibson’s directorial debut The Man Without a Face (1993).
She also worked on television, appearing in the soap operas One Life to Live (1968) and The Doctors (1963). Her career includes memorable roles, in Ticket to Ride (1989) in which she starred as a bickering wife (opposite the late Christopher Cazenove) and the soap-opera spoof Good & Evil (1991), where she played against type as the “good girl”, opposite the more wicked-minded Teri Garr. In made-for-television movies she is best known for her portrayal of the tough-as-nails attorney Leslie Abramson in Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills (1994).
Whitton returned to Broadway in “And the Apple Doesn’t Fall…” (1995) and in the original, award-winning musical “Marlene” (1999), the story of legendary Marlene Dietrich that starred Siân Phillips. She has also made a name for herself as a theater director. Her directing credits include Marina Carr’s “Portia Coughlin” (1996) and “By the Bog of Cats” (1998), and The Public Theater’s production of “Dirty Tricks” (2004), starring Judith Ivey as Martha Mitchell. Whitton was President of independent film producer Tashtego Films, and directed A Bird of the Air (2011), starring Rachel Nichols and Jackson Hurst.
