American · b. 1967
Lili Taylor built her career on quiet, exacting attention to people other actors would overlook — the grieving teenager in Say Anything..., the abuse survivor in Dogfight, the fame-obsessed acolyte in I Shot Andy Warhol. Born in Glencoe, Illinois, in 1967, she broke out in 1988's Mystic Pizza and built a three-decade career across independent film, television (Six Feet Under, American Crime), and Broadway. A director on the National Audubon Society's board, Taylor turned the same watchfulness she'd honed as an actor onto birds during a break from film work, tracking hawks over Manhattan and warblers from her own window. Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticing, her first book, collects the essays that grew out of that attention — a finalist for the Gotham Book Prize and a national bestseller. She lives with her husband, the poet and memoirist Nick Flynn, and their daughter.