Marcia Cross was a television actress renowned for impeccable precision in playing the parts. Throughout her acting career, she managed to surprise the viewers by showing the unexpected sides and emotions underneath the mask of the elegant character that seemed perfectly composed. Years in soap operas and prime-time serials allowed the actress to acquire a great reputation among TV viewers as one of the best female American actors of recent years.

Life and education of an actress

Born on March 25, 1962, in the town of Marlborough in Massachusetts, Marcia Cross started developing her acting talents quite early. Training at the New York-based Juilliard School provided the actress with all the tools needed to become precise on screen later in her career. The skills to control not only what is said but also to whom and how it is said and to make even excessive material look natural helped Marcia Cross build a great career.

Breakthrough role and career

Similar to many other future television stars, Marcia Cross started developing her career with the help of minor parts for the screen and got the basic skills to deal with the camera. But the main difference between her and some other actresses of this type of movies was that she learned all the things in advance before the acting career began and knew perfectly how to deliver a certain performance to be seen by directors. Being well prepared in terms of techniques made it possible for Marcia Cross to become famous for her exact acting performance and unique skills.

Break through

Entering the world of daytime soap operas during her late twenties (The Edge of Night and One Life to Live during the 1980s), Cross continued building her career by perfecting the acting skills she had got earlier. Being in an environment that demanded a lot from actors in its production, the soaps helped her develop a certain style in performance that could include intensity and consistency simultaneously.

The year 1992 was the first step to becoming a superstar as actress Marcia Cross played the very important role of Dr. Kimberly Shaw at Melrose Place. This character developed over time as did the show itself, giving her an opportunity to display all the richness of acting skills acquired over the years. As a character on the show, Kimberly Shaw was an example of one of the typical TV people with all the features that can be associated with such characters: polished outside, volatile nature, full of surprises for the viewers and extremely intriguing for the same reason. Besides the ability to surprise with her unpredictable behavior, Marcia Cross also showed the ability to make the viewers empathetic to the fate of the main character, giving the character the emotional depth needed. So this role became for her as famous as Melrose Place itself.

As Melrose Place became the favorite program for many fans of prime-time dramas of the end of the 20th century, it also gave an opportunity for Marcia Cross to establish the image of an actress that is related to the specific type of the heroines – those who look perfect and controlled but have a mess inside that cannot be noticed by others.

Afterword and new opportunities

If Melrose Place gave an actress her reputation in the world of daytime soaps, Desperate Housewives became a breakthrough for the career of Marcia Cross, giving a possibility of being well-known by almost everybody who watches TV. In 2004, Marcia Cross played the part of Bree Van de Kamp in a program that gained huge popularity in the US for a decade after and which gave a chance for the actress not only to get wider audience but also to prove the talent again. Her character Bree Van de Kamp was created especially for Marcia Cross.

This part also showed that Marcia Cross can successfully combine the social satire in performing her parts with emotional precision as she showed all the complexity of the character and the tragedy that lies inside it through all these laughing moments of the show and in the same time made Bree Van de Kamp an outstanding character in this program.

Afterword

Since the program was closed in 2012, Marcia Cross took quite a small number of roles after this and returned to TV in a selective way. It seems she had no problems in finding the appropriate roles due to the two very successful performances during many years of career. So it does not look surprising that after all the achievements that she had in recent past she became the actress who has enough fans to continue the career as good as she could before.

To sum up, the history of career of actress Marcia Cross is a story of how to perform the part perfectly on television by using the precision of the tools you have got during your life.