Caroline Aaron

Caroline Aaron is a durable character actress best known to moviegoers as a key ensemble player in several Woody Allen films of the '80s and '90s. Playing roles that typified Allen's largely Jewish social and familial milieu, Aaron, with her tough no-nonsense approach, became a favorite cast addition of several leading directors, including Robert Altman, Nora Ephron, and Mike Nichols. Born to a prominent Jewish-American household in Richmond, Virginia, Aaron's family includes a former civil rights activist mother and a theater director sister. Eager to set her own path as an artist, Aaron initially pursued acting work on Broadway before making her screen debut in 1982 in the Robert Altman-directed "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean." She followed up the same year with a bit part in the John Sayles romantic drama "Baby It's You" and went on to meatier roles in Mike Nichols' "Heartburn" (1986) and "Working Girl" (1988). But she gained the most notoriety playing Woody Allen's sister in his acclaimed 1989 dark comedy "Crimes and Misdemeanors," a character that the actress would somewhat reprise on the director's subsequent "Alice" and "Deconstructing Harry." In the '90s and '00s, Aaron began making inroads into TV acting, as well as returning to the stage, performing, most notably, under her sister Josephine Abady's direction in the play "The Boys Next Door."