Photo: Jean-Paul Aussenard /WireImage.com

Born in Jackson Heights, Queens, NY; educated at Catholic College (New Rochelle, NY; English). Energetic, quirky regional theater graduate who came to screen prominence as Dean Stockwell's jealous Mafia wife in the Jonathan Demme spoof, MARRIED TO THE MOB (1988). Ruehl played Tom Hanks's frantic mother in BIG that same year and won a Tony® Award for her moving performance as the browbeaten Aunt Bella, a 35 year-old woman with a childlike mind, in Neil Simon's Pulitzer Prize-winning Lost in Yonkers, a role she reprised in the 1993 film version directed by Martha Coolidge. She earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar®, a Golden Globe and a Los Angeles Film Critics Society award for her role as the supportive, no-nonsense girlfriend of Jeff Bridges in Terry Gilliam's THE FISHER KING (1991). Other notable credits include CRAZY PEOPLE (1990), LAST ACTION HERO (1993), "Gia" (1998, TV), THE MINUS MAN and OUT OF THE COLD (both 1999), WHAT'S COOKING? and MORE DOGS THAN BONES and THE AMATI GIRLS (all 2000), the 2002 TV mini-series "Widows," ZEYDA AND THE HITMAN (2004), and A HAPPY DEATH (announced for 2008). Ruehl appears frequently on television, in both series and made-for-television movies. She was nominated for a 2002 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for her role in The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?.  Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role 1991: THE FISHER KING 1 nomination, 1 Award