Madeleine Stowe Mora was born on August 18, 1958, in Eagle Rock, a working-class neighborhood of Los Angeles. The daughter of a civil engineer from Oregon and a Costa Rican émigré, Madeleine was a quiet and shy child. At age 10, she began training as a concert pianist with Sergei Tarnowsky, Vladimir Horowitz's childhood instructor. Madeleine loved the piano, recalling that "practicing for hours every day was an excuse to stay away from other kids."

However, when Tarnowsky died in 1976, Madeleine decided to quit the piano and develop her social life, since she had been a wallflower throughout high school.

Enrolling at UCLA soon after, Madeleine studied film and journalism for a while but eventually dropped out without completing a degree. She began to volunteer at Beverly Hills' Solaris Theater, and soon took up acting there. Madeleine earned her first professional credits on television, in such made-for-TV movies as The Nativity and The Deerslayer (both 1978), miniseries such as Beulah Land (1980) and The Gangster Chronicles (1981), and television programs such as The Amazing Spider-Man and Little House on the Prairie.

It would be almost 10 years before Madeleine Stowe would break out in feature films. But her chance finally came with 1987's Stakeout, in which she starred alongside Richard Dreyfuss. In 1990, she starred in Revenge with Kevin Costner as well as in The Two Jakes with Jack Nicholson, the highly anticipated sequel to 1974's neo-noir classic, Chinatown.

Madeleine reached a new professional height in 1992, when she co-starred with Daniel Day-Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann's acclaimed adaptation of the James Fenimore Cooper novel. That same year, she also starred alongside Kurt Russell and Ray Liotta in the thriller, Unlawful Entry.

The mid-1990s were fruitful years for Madeleine Stowe. 1993 saw her make an uncredited appearance in Another Stakeout, and then give a moving performance as a put-upon wife in Robert Altman's Short Cuts (she took home a National Society of Film Critics Award as Best Supporting Actress for her work).

The following year she starred in Blink, as a blind "witness" to a murder, China Moon, and Bad Girls, in which she played a prostitute who takes matters into her own hands in the Wild West. This period peaked with Twelve Monkeys, Terry Gilliam's sci-fi thriller that paired up Madeleine with Bruce Willisand Brad Pitt.

In 1998, Madeleine appeared in Playing by Heart and The Proposition, and then in 1999, after some last-minute casting, she had a supporting role in The General's Daughter, starring John Travolta. Madeleine then took a three-year break, returning to the big screen in Impostor with Gary Sinise, and the small screen in the A&E remake of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons.

Also in 2002, Madeleine appeared in We Were Soldiers, and Avenging Angelo. In 2003, she starred in Octane with The O.C.'s Mischa Barton