Madeleine Stowe: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About ABC’s ‘Revenge’ Star

Madeleine Stowe plays the icy matriarch Victoria Grayson in the ABC television series Revenge, for which she was recently nominated for a Golden Globe award. The 53-year-old actress has starred in films such as The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and Twelve Monkeys (1995). Here are 10 things you probably didn't know about her:

1. She was born Madeleine Marie Stowe Mora on August 18, 1958, in Eagle Rock, a suburb of Los Angeles, and later grew up in nearby Glendale.

2. She is the daughter of an Anglo-American father from Oregon, who worked as a civil engineer, and a Costa Rican mother, a first generation immigrant.

3. From the age of 10, she studied to be a concert pianist, but quit at age 18 after her instructor died.

4. She attended the University of Southern California, where she studied film and journalism, but eventually dropped out.

5. She later began volunteering at the Solaris Theater in Beverly Hills, where she took up acting.

6. She was discovered by Richard Dreyfuss' agent while handing out programs at one of his performances, which led to her getting a small role in the 1978 TV crime drama Baretta.

7. Her father died in 1983 due to complications from multiple sclerosis.

8. Her breakout role was in the 1987 film Stakeout, alongside Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez.

9. She met her husband, actor Brian Benben, on the set of the 1981 miniseries The Gangster Chronicles, and has been married to him since 1986. They have a son and daughter together.

10. She and Benben own a cattle ranch near Fredericksburg, Texas.