If you saw Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning “August: Osage County,” you’re one up on Carrie Coon — and she’s married to him.
“He never lets me forget that,” sighs Coon, who met the actor/playwright years after “August” left Broadway — when they starred together in the 2012 Tony-winning revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Theirs is an example of a “sho-mance that worked,” she says.
Coon’s since gone on to star alongside Ben Affleck, whose twin sister she played in “Gone Girl,” and Justin Theroux, who plays her lover in TV’s “The Leftovers.”
Through April 5, you’ll catch her at Playwrights Horizons in “Placebo,” in which she plays a sex researcher with a troubled sex life of her own.
Here are four of her favorite books:
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
Salinger had me from “Catcher in the Rye,” which I read when I was quite young. As I became an actor, I found Salinger’s description of behavior in “Franny and Zooey” so satisfying, so evocative of character. I also love this family, whose towering intellects get in their way in their search for something simple.
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Mistry wrote about the emergency declared in India in 1965. It’s an excoriating examination of the caste system and the kind of profound poverty far from my personal experience. Mistry’s not a flashy writer, and you become deeply invested in his people. He imbues them with a deep humanity, and it never feels exploitive. I was sobbing by the time I finished it.
Stoner by John Williams
This was recommended to me by Chris Eccleston [Rev. Matt in “The Leftovers”]. Chris is British — the Brits discovered this unsung American writer before we did. Stoner’s an academic who teaches at a small university. His marriage is a failure, he has an affair, and the sum total of his life isn’t exciting, yet this book is a captivating read.
Thirst by Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver wrote this book of poetry after losing her partner of 30 years as an attempt to grapple with overwhelming grief and find some kind of meaning in her loss. She writes beautifully about nature, animals, her dog. It seems to me to be a search for the divine and reminds me to be present in the moment I’m in.