Academy Award winning actress, Melissa Leo, is an American actress who started her career being a regular on television shows like All My Children and The Young Riders in the 1980s. It was only in 1993, that Melissa Leo bagged her breakthrough role as Det. Sgt. Kay Howard on Homicide: Life on the Street and was a regular on the show for five seasons (1993-97). She then reprised her role, three years later, for Homicide: The Movie.

After a brief hiatus from acting, she featured in the film 21 Grams (2003), which received widespread critical acclaim. Her other notable work includes film Frozen River (2008), The Fighter (2010), for which she won various accolades including the Golden Globe, Screenwriters Guild Award, and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She also won an Emmy Award for her guest role on the television series Louie, Wayward Pines (2015).

Her other notable work includes Veronika Decides To Die (2009), Olympus Has Fallen (2013), The Angriest Man In Brooklyn (2014), and London Has Fallen (2016), among others. Leo was also a part of an episode in the 1985 series The Equalizer, before becoming a part of the film, The Equalizer (2014) and its sequel The Equalizer 2 (2018).