Mary-Louise Parker's brown eyes dart from side to side, giving her time to respond to the latest crisis on Weeds, Showtime's popular pot show. Her character Nancy Botwin sells kind bud to the Agrestic's denizens when she's not busy raisng her family or going on drive-by shootings with the local gangsta.

It's all played for laughs, but Weeds is not your ususal comedy - it's TV's first-ever cannabis- themed sit-com. And the show revolves around Nancy's life in a cookie-cutter California suburb inhabited by the self-obsessed well-to-do who live in "little boxes," as the theme song goes.

No one would have ever expected Parker - known for her work on stage and screen - to emerge as TV's leading lady of pot. The 43-year-old actress has won a Tony (for Proof), a Stony (Weeds), two Golden Globes (Weeds, Angels in America) and an Emmy (Angels) during a career that began on Broadway and expanded to Hollywood in the early-'90s with roles in Fried Green Tomatoes and Grand Canyon. For five years, she appeared on The West Wing as Amy Gardner and then came Angels in America, the HBO miniseries about AIDS that eaned her several awards and acclaim.

For her next TV part, she took on the role of Weeds' soccer-mom pot dealer. Now in its third season, Weeds has become a stoner staple, with Parker leading a stellar cast that includes Kevin Nealon, Justin Kirk, Elizabeth Perkins, Romany Malco and newcomers Mary-Kate Olsen and Matthew Modine.

After winning the 2006 Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series, Musical or Comedy for Weeds, she stated: "I'm really in favor of legalizing marijuana. I don't think it's that controversial."

Parker recently adopted an African baby. It's her second child. She annouced her engagement to marry fellow actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan - he appeared as her husband Judah during the opening season of Weeds and has been on Grey's Anatomy since 2006 - but decided not to in April.

The fourth season of Weeds kicks off on June 16. 

Pic: Mary-Louise Parker as Nancy Botwin on Weeds   

More Mary-Louise:

Weeds goes up in smoke

Rachael Ray loves Weeds  

Official Weeds website  

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