Mary-Louise Parker, 43, is rumored to be back on the market. The AP reported that the actress broke off her engagement to Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays her dead husband on the show Weeds.

One story quoted an anonymous friend of Parker’s as saying that she and Morgan had “differing lifestyles” which may be code for implying that one thinks he or she isn’t good enough for the other -- or perhaps there’s a reason why the actress has never shied away from gay-themed projects like the Sapphic-suggestive Fried Green Tomatoes and Boys on the Side. We don’t mind fantasizing that men and women alike might have a shot now that her guy is on the way out. Her reps said they don’t comment publicly on the personal lives of clients, which leaves us free to wildly speculate.

We can’t help but feel sorry for Morgan, but a lot of men are probably overjoyed. You see, he played the late Denny Duquette on the show Grey’s Anatomy and men couldn’t possibly live up to that character in the minds of their girlfriends and wives. Imagine how awkward things are going to be on the set of Weeds now!

Previous to Morgan, she had a longtime relationship with actor Billy Crudup after the twosome appeared opposite each other in the 1996 play Bus Stop. The couple went their separate ways in 2003 while she was seven months pregnant with Crudup’s son. She’s also been linked romantically to Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz and actor Tim Hutton.

Mum We’d Like To… Watch

We enjoy watching Parker play pot-selling suburban mum Nancy Botwin on the Showtime series Weeds. In real life, she’s also a mother.

Despite being around for 20 some years, she has never looked better. If we weren’t watching Weeds before Parker posed nude with a snake in the advertisements, we surely would be now. She’s never had a problem showing a little flesh. She told one interviewer, “Nudity is the most brilliant distraction there is, because people think, ‘Oh, you’re revealing something.’ And you’re revealing nothing.”

Sides of Mary-Louise

In addition to beauty and talent, Parker also has a wicked sense of humor. We know this because she wrote a piece for Esquire that had us rolling.

“Aside from the tragic, there exist many mundane but still unsettling ways in which my three-year-old son could choose to individuate: surfer, Republican, Japanese-comic-book enthusiast, or, to wound me, member of a college fraternity,” she wrote in the article. “Maybe the popularity of American Idol has produced all this music that seems like it could be lifted from a consensual-rape scene on Days of Our Lives. The radio seems to play great audition material, or super first-dance songs at someone’s third wedding.”

Oh, That Girl!

While MLP may not be the brightest star in Hollywood, we’re always see Parker’s low-key but reliable presence in movies like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Red Dragon, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Romance & Cigarettes, Saved!, Pieces of April, Goodbye Lover, Bullets Over Broadway, Mr. Wonderful, Grand Canyon, or Longtime Companion.

She’s also great on TV, having done Weeds, The West Wing, Angels in America, and Legalese.

In so many of her roles, she plays the “long-suffering girl next door.”

Just the Facts

She was born August 2, 1964 in Fort Jackson, South Carolina.

She graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts.

In 2001, she won a Tony award for best actress in the play Proof.

The Counting Crows song Butterfly in Reverse was written for her. A butterfly in reverse? So she's a catepillar?