Julianna Margulies (; born June 8, 1966) is an American actress. After several small television roles, Margulies received wide recognition for her starring role as Carol Hathaway in the NBC medical drama series ER (1994–2000; 2009), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award and six Screen Actors Guild Awards, in addition to four Golden Globe Award nominations. In 2009, she took on the lead role of Alicia Florrick in the CBS legal drama series The Good Wife (2009–2016). Her performance garnered critical acclaim, winning an additional two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Television Critics Association Award.
Margulies also had roles in the TNT miniseries The Mists of Avalon (2001), the HBO crime drama series The Sopranos (2006–2007), the National Geographic miniseries The Hot Zone (2019), and as Laura Peterson in the Apple TV+ drama series The Morning Show (2021–2023).
She starred in the adventure film Dinosaur (2000), the drama film Evelyn (2002), the supernatural horror film Ghost Ship (2002), the action horror film Snakes on a Plane (2006), the comedy drama film City Island (2009), the crime comedy film Stand Up Guys (2012), and the comedy drama film The Upside (2017).
Margulies has received one Golden Globe Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and eight Screen Actors Guild Awards, making her the second most awarded woman ever within SAG after Julia Louis-Dreyfus. She is also the recipient of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2015, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Julianna Margulies was born in Spring Valley, New York, the youngest of three daughters. Her mother Francesca (née Gardner) was a ballet dancer and eurythmy teacher. Her father Paul Margulies was a writer, philosopher, and Madison Avenue advertising executive. Her parents were both Jewish, descendants of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants from Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Russia. They divorced when she was a year old.
In her memoir Sunshine Girl, Margulies wrote that her parents both adhered to the teachings of anthroposophy. Margulies, herself, has said that she does not hold religious beliefs, although she is ethnically Jewish and teaches the traditions to her son. In a 2013 interview, she said, "I would say if I had a religion, it would be gratitude…I love the tradition of Judaism that on Friday nights, Shabbat means 'Goodbye to the workweek; hello to family and the weekend.'"
In her memoir, Margulies also wrote about her difficult, nomadic childhood. She is from New York City, but she moved with her mother to different countries and states throughout her youth, including Sussex, England, and Paris, France. As a result, French was Margulies' first language. She has since lost the ability to speak it fluently.
In the book, Margulies described her childhood as ultimately loving, but unpredictable and unstable. She detailed many emotionally traumatic experiences.
Margulies attended many different schools as a child, including Green Meadow Waldorf School and High Mowing School. She graduated with a degree in art history and English from Sarah Lawrence College, where she appeared in several campus plays. At Sarah Lawrence College, students select three areas of focus for coursework. Margulies focused on art history, English, and theatre. She originally enrolled in college with the goal of becoming a lawyer, like her grandmother, or a psychologist, but fell in love with the craft of acting.
Margulies made her feature film debut in Steven Seagal's action film Out for Justice (1991), playing a prostitute. In 1994, Margulies was cast in the pilot episode of the NBC medical drama ER as Carol Hathaway, an emergency care nurse who attempts suicide. Her character was originally intended to die; however, test audiences overwhelmingly wanted her to survive, so the producers changed the plot.
At the time she was offered ER, Margulies had also been offered an extended role on NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street, after a two-episode appearance earlier in the year. George Clooney, who had filmed the pilot episode with Margulies, called her to let her know that he had overheard producers saying that her character might become a series regular. He encouraged her to consider waiting for ER producers to call her and not take another job. Clooney was right, and Margulies accepted the role on ER in 1994.
She remained on the show as a series regular for six seasons until 2000 and returned to the show for one episode during its final season in 2009. She won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 1994, and was nominated for an Emmy Award every year during her tenure on ER. She was the only series regular cast member to win a Primetime Emmy Award. She was also nominated four times for a Golden Globe Award during the show's tenure.
Originally, Margulies had signed a five-year contract to work on ER. She extended the contract for a sixth year, but made the "very difficult, painful decision" to opt out of another renewal. In 2021, she explained in her memoir, Sunshine Girl, that she had been feeling homesick for New York after spending six years filming the show in Los Angeles. She wanted to return to theatre and take on a leading role in The Mists of Avalon, a miniseries based on the 1983 fantasy novel of the same name, which she had loved as a child.
In 2021, Margulies said during an interview with Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa, "I thought, didn't I work six years on a show I loved — I loved being on ER, I was so grateful, and it was a great experience — but didn't I work this hard to be able to do theatre for $235 a week without worrying about my rent?" She explained that, before NBC offered her $27 million to sign on for another two years, she had already helped plan out the conclusion of her character's story arc on the show and mapped out a year's worth of work for herself.
In a New York Times interview with Bill Carter, Margulies shared that another factor in her decision was a desire to protect her ER character, Carol Hathaway, from certain story changes that were happening as the show continued on into later years. She explained that she didn't like how her character became the focus of too much romance whenever she wasn't with George Clooney's character, and that all of the research she had previously done in order to play the character was then undone by certain storylines.
Margulies recalled, "I'll never forget, there was a line [in the script] where [my character] says, 'I had to share a bathroom with seven sisters.' I was like, guys, I've been playing her as an only child for six years…I had actually done research on what it's like to be an only child. I was starting to feel very sad about a character I loved so much. It started to become very clear to me that without George, my character was just going to be the liaison to flashy sort of bits of things instead of one fluent, cognizant thought and I felt sad about it."
Had Margulies accepted the $27 million contract for a seventh and eighth year of ER, it would have made her one of the highest paid women on television. The actress said that she received intense, hurtful backlash for her decision to ultimately leave ER, but was "doing what fed me, as an actor," she said in 2021. "And keeping my promises to playwrights and directors who I'd already made a commitment to." She also said that she wanted to move on as an actress:
I had a year's worth of work waiting and a mortgage completely paid at age 32. I was under no illusion that I was going to be some big movie star. My dad said, 'If you got hit by a bus tomorrow, were you living your life truthfully, or were you waiting to get rich?' If I died and my soul started leaving my body, would I be looking down going, 'You idiot. You could have gone to Prague, you could have been on Broadway'? Those are the things I wanted to do.