Sela Ward

The Mississippi girl who didn't want to act

Sela Ward arrived in New York with a suitcase and a fine arts degree under her arm. She wasn't looking for the spotlight but for advertising design. But looks rule in Manhattan, and she ended up working for the Wilhelmina agency before anyone uttered the word casting.

And the plan changed completely.

Her debut came in 1983 with the film The Man Who Loved Women. There she shared the set with Burt Reynolds and realized the camera wanted her more than the paintbrush. It was not an easy road, since in those early years she took one supporting role after another that barely made use of her dramatic talent.

In 1991 she landed the TV drama Sisters. Playing Teddy Reed allowed her to move beyond the pretty-face image and explore the rough edges of a woman struggling with alcoholism. She won her first Emmy in 1994 thanks to that raw performance, which broke the mold for network television at the time.

The forties wall and Ward's response

When she turned 40, a producer told her to her face that she was no longer sexually attractive enough for leading roles. Instead of retreating to her ranch in Mississippi, she decided to fight the system.

She accepted the lead role in Once and Again in 1999.

The series portrayed divorce and adulthood without sugarcoating. The result was a slap in the face to that producer. She took home the Golden Globe in 2001 and another Emmy, proving that audiences connected with stories about real women.

But Ward always knew television was more fertile ground than big studio films. On the big screen she specialized in brief but high-impact roles. In 1993 she played the murdered woman of Harrison Ford in The Fugitive, a part that lasted only a few minutes but drove the entire plot.

Numbers, contracts and partial retirement

Her stint on House in 2005 as Stacy Warner revived her presence in households around the world. She was one of the few actresses able to hold her own in a verbal sparring match with Hugh Laurie across ten episodes.

Years later, she made the leap to crime investigation franchises. In 2010, she replaced Melina Kanakaredes in CSI: NY, and in 2018 she joined the cast of FBI to fill in for Connie Nielsen's absence.

And the gamble paid off.

Her role in Gone Girl in 2014 under the direction of David Fincher reminded the industry of her technical precision. She played TV host Sharon Schieber with surgical coolness that stole every scene.

In 2016 she appeared in the blockbuster Independence Day: Resurgence, playing the President of the United States. It was a massive-budget shoot that grossed 389 million dollars worldwide.

Ward decided not to renew her contract with the series FBI after wrapping the first season in May 2019. Her exit was agreed under a one-year deal previously signed with the CBS network. Her most recent on-screen appearance to date was in the episode titled Closure.