An accomplished actress, Martha Plimpton has achieved success on stage, screen and television. For her work on Raising Hope, she was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and twice for a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Comedy.

Plimpton recently reprised her role as Patti Nyholm in the season finale of The Good Wife. This performance garnered Plimpton a 2012 Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in Drama Series.

In addition to her guest appearance on The Good Wife, Plimpton's memorable TV guest appearances include Fringe, How To Make It In America and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for which she earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.

Plimpton has appeared in over 30 films, including The Goonies, The Mosquito Coast, Running on Empty, Beautiful Girls, Parenthood, 200 Cigarettes, Pecker Eye of God, and the recent independent feature Small Town Murder Songs.

On stage, Plimpton starred in the New York Philharmonic concert of Stephen Sondheim's Company, opposite Patti LuPone and Stephen Colbert. Previously, she starred alongside Stockard Channing in Pal Joey for the Roundabout Theatre Company, garnering her third Tony nomination in as many years, as well as a Drama Desk nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical and a Drama League nomination. In 2008, Plimpton starred in Top Girls for the Manhattan Theatre Club and received Tony and Drama Desk nominations, and starred in Lincoln Center Theatre's production of William Shakespeare's Cymbeline.

In 2006-07, Plimpton appeared in Tom Stoppard's 9 hour trilogy, The Coast of Utopia at Lincoln Center Theater, for which she earned a Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award and Tony nomination. Other appearances on stage include Shakespeare in the Park's A Midsummer Night's Dream, MTC's Shining City, CSC's The False Servant (Drama League nomination), HurlyBurly and Atlantic Theater Company's Hobson's Choice (Obie Award, Lortell nomination). She is also a proud member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble since 1998, where she has appeared in Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, Stephen Jeffries' The Libertine opposite John Malkovich, and made her directing debut there with Absolution in 2001.

Plimpton divides her time between Los Angeles and New York City.