Most recently, Danner recently won the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her recurring role in the Showtime series Huff. Danner also had starred as the wife of Robert De Niro in the comedy blockbusters Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers. In addition, she had a recurring role as Eric McCormack's mother on Will & Grace.

Danner's other feature film credits include To What Sweet End, The Invisible Circus, Three Days of Rain The Love Letter, Forces of Nature, The Farmhouse, The X-Files, No Looking Back, The Proposition, Mad City, The Myth of Fingerprints, Homage, Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives, The Prince of Tides, Alice, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, Another Woman, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Man, Woman and Child, The Great Santini, Futureworld, Hearts of the West, Lovin' Molly, 1776, and To Kill a Clown.

Among her many films for television, Danner was honored with an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe nomination for her work in We Were the Mulvaneys and an Emmy nomination for Back When We Were Grownups. Her telefilms include Saint Maybe, From the Earth to the Moon, A Call to Remember, Leave of Absence, and The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, among many others.

Danner has also been a series regular on Presidio Med for CBS, Tattingers for NBC and Adam's Rib for ABC.

On Broadway, Danner received the Tony Award for her Broadway stage debut in Butterflies Are Free. She would go on to receive Tony nominations for her roles in Betrayal, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Follies, and Drama Desk nominations for Betrayal and The New York Idea. Danner's other New York stage appearances include The Deep Blue Sea at the Roundabout, and a revival of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit at The Neil Simon Theatre. Danner has also appeared in numerous productions at Lincoln Center, among them a revival of The Philadelphia Story, The Miser, Lovers, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Born in Philadelphia, Danner graduated from Bard College, with a degree in Drama. Between high school and college, she spent a year studying Lieder in Berlin. She began her acting career working with the Theater Company of Boston in the play Someone's Comin' Hungry, with Cleavon Little, and produced by her future husband, the late Bruce Paltrow.