Kristin Rudrüd

Kristin Rudrüd (born May 23, 1955) is an American film, theater, and television actress.

Life and career
Rudrüd was born and went to grade school in Fargo, North Dakota. She went to high school in Fargo, and after graduation attended Minnesota State University-Moorhead. She studied acting in London, returned briefly to Fargo, and then went to New York City where she found success in theater; landing a part in Amadeus, and performed a public theater reading of Othello, which starred Al Pacino.

After she returned to Fargo, she started her career as a film actress. In 1996, Rudrüd starred as William H. Macy's doomed wife Jean Lundegaard in Joel and Ethan Coen's black comedy film Fargo. She had a small role in the 1999 comedy Pleasantville, also starring Macy; in a short film Wheels Locked, which received a "Best of the Fest" at the Rochester International Film Festival and as an actress in Drop Dead Gorgeous, and in the short film A Psychic Mom.

She appeared in television roles on Chicago Hope, and All My Children. In the 2023 Fargo episode "Linda", the seventh episode of its fifth season, set in the same world as the 1996 film, Rudrüd appears photographically again as Jean Lundegaard, a photo of the doomed housewife appearing within Dot Lyon's dreamscape of the afterlife "Camp Utopia".

Personal life
Rudrüd is married and has a daughter, and she still makes her home in Fargo.

Selected filmography

 * A Psychic Mom (1993) – Judy Banning
 * Fargo (1996) – Jean Lundegaard
 * Pleasantville (1998) – Mary
 * Frog and Wombat (1998) – Mrs. Reverend Walker
 * Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999) – Connie Rudrüd, the Pork Products Lady
 * Herman U.S.A. (2001) – Gloria Swanson
 * Fargo Season 5, Episode 7: "Linda" (2023) – Jean Lundegaard (photograph)