Amy Irving

Amy Irving grew up in the theatre and film world with her director father, Jules Irving, and actress mother, Priscilla Pointer. She first garnered attention as an actress for her roles in Brian DePalma’s early films Carrie (1976) and The Fury (1978). She went on to starring roles in Voices (1979), Honeysuckle Rose (1980), The Competition (1980), and Micki & Maude (1984). She received an Oscar nomination for her role in Yentl (1983) and a Golden Globe nomination for her role in the popular film Crossing Delancey (1988). Irving has gone on to work in various other films including Carried Away (1996), Adam (2009), and two films for director Steven Soderbergh, Traffic (2000) and Unsane (2018). She most recently acted in the independent feature films Confetti and A Mouthful of Air (both 2021).

In theatre, Irving trained at the American Conservatory Theater and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Ms. Irving participated in Chekhov’s Three Sisters at the Roundabout Theatre. Irving received critical acclaim on Broadway in Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass at the Booth Theatre. For Broken Glass, Irving was nominated for both a 1994 Drama Desk Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award. She has also starred in the Broadway productions of Amadeus and Heartbreak House, for which she received another Drama Desk nomination, and won an Obie Award as Best Actress for her performance in Road to Mecca, as well as receiving a Drama Desk nomination. She had the leading role in the 1991 Los Angeles premiere of The Heidi Chronicles. At the Santa Fe Festival Theatre, she starred with her mother, Priscilla Pointer, in The Glass Menagerie, and with Madeline Kahn and Victor Garber in Coward’s Blithe Spirit. She enjoyed a run of The Vagina Monologues, both off-Broadway and in the West End in London, and appeared in Ibsen’s Ghosts at the Classic Stage Company, Fear for the Naked Angels, and The Exonerated. In the summer of 2004, she produced and starred in a new play as the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop at the Powerhouse Theater for New York Stage and Film, going on to produce and star in A Safe Harbor for Elizabeth Bishop for Primary Stages in 2006. Charles Evered wrote the play Celadine for her, and it was produced at the George Street Playhouse. She participated in the Ensemble Studio Theatre One-Act Marathon. In 2007, she enjoyed a long run of the Tony-winning play by Tom Stoppard, The Coast of Utopia, at Lincoln Center.

Also on stage, Irving appeared in Waters of March, The Glass Menagerie at the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall, Motherhood Out Loud for the Hartford Stage, Isaac Mizrahi’s production of A Little Night Music at the St. Louis Opera, and Zoe Kazan’s We Live Here. Irving also performed in Cheri off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre, at Lincoln Center in Washington, and at the Ravenna Festival in Italy. Most recently, she acted in Lady in the Dark at New York City Center. 

On television, her credits include The Twilight Zone: Rod Sterling’s Lost Classics; the miniseries Anastasia, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination; Spin City; Law and Order: SVU; Alias; House; The Good Wife; Soundtrack; and the Showtime series The Affair.

Irving’s exciting next venture is in the music world.  She recorded her debut album, Born in a Trunk, which features songs from many of Irving’s films. The album, the first single from which debuts in March 2023, also draws inspiration from her family, career, marriages, and overall life experiences.