Who Is Frances McDormand's Husband? All About Joel Coen

Oscar winner Frances McDormand met her husband during an audition for the 1984 film 'Blood Simple'

Frances McDormand and Joel Coen are the perfect example of being in the right place at the right time.

The now-husband and wife first met during McDormand’s audition for the Coen Brothers’ first feature film, Blood Simple — but it was an audition she was considering skipping.

McDormand tried out for the leading role of Abby and, after the first read, told Joel that she would not be returning for a second audition because she wanted to see her then-boyfriend make his TV debut in a soap opera. However, she went on to accept the role — in 2015, she joked to AFP that Joel only hired her because she had initially said no — and has since worked with her husband on many other projects.

While working so closely with a spouse may be intimidating for some, it is second nature to McDormand and Joel.

"It was a revelation that I could have a lover who I could also work with and I wasn't intimidated by the person,” the Fargo actress told The New York Times in 2017. "But that didn't happen with Joel. It was: 'Wow! Really! Oh, my God!' I can actually love and live — not subvert anything, not apologize for anything, not hide anything."

Here’s everything to know about Frances McDormand’s husband, Joel Coen.

He’s a filmmaker

Joel and his younger sibling Ethan make up the Coen Brothers, a filmmaking duo best known for Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and more.

The brothers worked together for more than four decades before undertaking separate endeavors. “It’s not like when we first got together, we planned on working together for 40 years,” Joel explained to The New York Times in January 2022 while promoting his Shakespeare thriller The Tragedy of Macbeth. “It just kind of happened that way. When we said, ‘Let’s do some other stuff separately for a little while,’ it’s not like there’s any plan for how long and what that would mean.”

In a December 2021 interview with The Guardian, Joel reiterated that working alongside Ethan was never going to be permanent. However, there is no reason to rule out a future Coen Brothers collaboration.

“Look, here’s the thing. When [Ethan and I] started working together, we never asked ourselves if this was permanent, and we don’t think about this in that way, either,” he said. “We just thought we should do some different things for a while. But I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. I’m in my late 60s. Hopefully, I can do this for a while — but who the f--- knows?”

He has won four Academy Awards

Joel has won four Academy Awards throughout his career: in 1997 in the Best Original Screenplay category for Fargo, and in 2008 for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for No Country for Old Men.

Both Joel and McDormand took home an Oscar for their roles in Fargo — he served as the writer, director, producer and editor of the black comedy crime movie, while she portrayed police chief Marge Gunderson.

He and McDormand first bonded over books

When Joel and McDormand first met, they bonded over their love of literature. While filming Blood Simple in Austin, Texas, the actress had only brought one book with her on set. She asked Joel for recommendations, and he then brought his future wife a box full of books.

“I asked him if there was anything he’d recommend,” she explained during a 2014 interview with The Daily Beast. “He brought me a box of James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler paperbacks, and I said, ‘Which one should I start with?’ And he said, The Postman Always Rings Twice.”

McDormand read the 1934 crime novel and called it one of the “sexiest books” she had ever read. A couple of nights later, she invited Joel over to discuss the book. “That did it. He seduced me with literature,” she added. “And then we discussed books and drank hot chocolate for several evenings.”

He gave McDormand a unique wedding ring

Prior to meeting McDormand, Joel was briefly married to someone else, whom he divorced in the late 1970s.

After they started dating, McDormand and Joel soon moved in with one another, but waited a few years to take their relationship to the next step. When the pair got married in 1984, they sealed their marriage in a rather unconventional way — with Joel’s ex-wife’s wedding ring.

The Hail, Caesar! star explained to The New York Times in 2017 that she had no problem wearing the hand-me-down and felt the ring was a practicality and shouldn’t go to waste.

He and McDormand share one son

Joel and McDormand are parents to one son, Pedro McDormand Coen, whom they adopted from Paraguay in 1995.

"As a mother, you live on the edge of disaster," McDormand told the Belfast Telegraph in 2018. "You just do. I didn't give birth to my son, I met him at 6 months old, but from the minute I held him and smelled him, I knew it was my job to keep him alive."

In 2023, Pedro shared a loving tribute to his dad on Father’s Day. “Always learning from you #fathersday” he captioned an Instagram photo of him leaning on Joel, with one hand on his shoulder.

He encourages McDormand to step outside her comfort zone

The two-time BAFTA Award-winning filmmaker often encourages his movie star wife to step outside of her comfort zone — including taking roles that she wouldn’t necessarily choose.

In 2018, McDormand won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of grieving mother Mildred Hayes in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, but it was her husband who convinced her to take the role in the first place. At a Toronto International Film Festival conference in September 2017, McDormand expressed her concerns that she felt she was “too old” to play Hayes, despite loving the script and character.

"Because at the time [writer and director Martin McDonagh] gave it to me, I was 58 ... I was concerned that women from this socioeconomic strata did not wait until 38 to have their first child," she explained at the time. “So we went back and forth and we debated that quite for a while, and then finally my husband said, ‘Just shut up and do it.' "

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