No, Monica Potter wasn’t just another cash grab by Joanne Rowling. She’s much better than that, an actress for thirty years now who’s starred alongside such greats as the late Robin Williams to One True God Nicolas Cage while holding her own in the profession. Monica has been making her way through Hollywood all this time.
Monica’s upbringing was certainly unique, beginning in Cleveland, Ohio in June of 1971. Her father was an inventor, creating a fire-resistant wax for cars, and her mother was a hospital secretary, but Monica had different aspirations. From a young age, she had aspirations of becoming… a nun? Strange, but she quickly turned her sights toward acting instead of the cloth, taking up modeling and commercial acting between other jobs starting at twelve. Sounds like child labor, but apparently that’s coming back into style.
Con Air
While her first credit was just a small part in The Young and the Restless, Monica would come in hot in 1996 after relocating to Los Angeles and getting a bit part in Adam Sandler’s comedy Bulletproof (Spoilers for Uncut Gems, right?) before landing the role that would take her career flying.
Literally, her next role was in the airplane action thriller Con-Air alongside Nicolas Cage and the Johns, Malkovich and Cusack.
With Monica making her mark in the film as the wife of Nic Cage’s convict character with surprisingly lush hair, there was nowhere to go but up.
Patch Adams
She went up quickly, starring in five movies in 1998 alone, capping the year alongside a prime Robin Williams in Patch Adams. Of course, anything involving Robin Williams was prime Robin Williams. Man never missed, hope he’s at peace.
Unfortunately for Monica, 1998 also brought a particular amount of stress. While she married her then-husband Tom Potter in 1990, also welcoming two children into the world over the next couple of years, their marriage would come to an end with the beginning of her career. The couple would divorce in 1998, with Monica seemingly taking a short break from acting for the next couple of years as fallout.
Along Came A Thriller
Not that it set her career back necessarily, making a return in 2001 alongside Morgan Freeman in Along Came a Spider, adapted. from the famous Alex Cross novels by James Patterson. She would take on roles more sparsely now, though they would differ in quality and content wildly from romantic comedies to a now-classic horror from a then-emerging director-writer duo.
Saw caught the box office and audiences in its sadistic trap, leading to massive success and the mainstream establishment of extreme horror, creating a mini-boom in what most call the “torture porn” genre. Monica Potter would play the wife of Cary Elwes’ doctor character, just another pawn in Jigsaw’s master plan. These movies went off the rails, onto a highway, and managed to fit the guard rails in the median so perfectly that the train just kept f*cking going, with more ridiculous traps each time. Shoutout to the laser collars.
Road Ends in Lake
Monica managed to fit into the niche again just a few years later, appearing in the remake of Wes Craven’s cult hit Last House on the Left. She would prove to be a badass, taking revenge on the criminals that hurt her daughter, and the movie would make waves on release as another hallmark of extreme horror.
Fortune would come and go for Monica again, with a marriage to Christopher Allison happening in 2007. The two would have a child together but unfortunately, file for divorce recently in 2018 after Allison joined the US Navy as a medic. Their divorce is currently ongoing.
Parenthood
While she would close the decade on a sour note, with her series regular role ending along with the show Trust Me after just one season. Fate would smile on her though, with a leading role in Parenthood to start the new decade off right, with a regular role that would see her in all five seasons of the dramedy series. There was a strange mix between This Is Us and Modern Family, which sounds weird but it worked.
What Did She Do After Parenthood?
Monica has kept on the scene since Parenthood’s end in 2015, though it’s only been to varied success. She also took the time in the decade to start her own business, focusing on home goods and essential oils. An attempt at establishing a new series in CBS’s Wisdom of the Crowd wouldn’t prove fruitful, but she’s still picked up roles in the acclaimed Billy Bob Thornton series Goliath as well as podcast series Confidential, with more projects on the schedule for the future.
While her newer projects seem to be returning to her scream queen roles among other things, it seems Monica’s taken the chance given since 2020 to focus on herself and family foremost. While she’s stopped selling essential oils, she does still have a site where she sells candles and custom birdhouses, which is honestly one of the better side hustles celebrities have used. Looking at you, Paltrow.
What is Monica Potter Doing Now?
Monica Potter has been involved in a variety of projects in recent years. In 2022, she lent her voice to the character of Dr. Bell in the podcast series “Classified”. She also appeared in the TV series “Goliath” from 2019 to 2021, playing the character Christina Lukin.
Prior to that, she was a regular on the TV series “Wisdom of the Crowd” from 2017 to 2018, where she portrayed Alex Hale. Her longest-running recent role was as Kristina Braverman in the TV series “Parenthood”, which she was a part of from 2010 to 2015.