Virginia Madsen is an American actress. She is the recipient of two Critics' Choice Awards, an Independent Spirit Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for one Academy Award and one Golden Globe Award.
Virginia Madsen was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Elaine (née Nelson), who became an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and author, and Calvin Christian Madsen, a firefighter. After Madsen's parents divorced in the late 1960s, when the children were young, her mother left a career in finance to pursue a career in the arts, encouraged by film critic Roger Ebert. Madsen's siblings are Michael Madsen, an actor, and Cheryl Madsen, an entrepreneur. Her paternal grandparents were Danish, and her mother has Irish and Scottish along with distant Native American ancestry. Madsen and her best friend Rusty Schwimmer are graduates of New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois.
Madsen later attended the Ted Liss Acting Studio in Chicago, and Harand Camp Adult Theater Seminar in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. Of her experience with Liss, she said: "I had wanted to join his class since I was 12. It was well worth the wait because I don't think I could have got that sort of training anywhere else, especially in the United States ... I always wanted to make a real career out of acting."
