Melissa Leo children: Meet John Matthew Heard

Publish date: 2024-04-22

Leo was raised in the Lower East Side after being born in Manhattan. She is the daughter of Arnold Leo III, an editor at Grove Press, a fisherman, and a former representative of the East Hampton Baymen’s Association, and Margaret (née Chessington), a California-born teacher.

Erik Leo is her older brother. Christine Leo Roussel, an art historian, is her paternal aunt. Leo’s mother relocated the family to Red Clover Commune in Putney, Vermont, after her parents were divorced.

The Bread and Puppet Theater Company was where Leo first started performing. She studied acting at SUNY Purchase and the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London while attending Bellows Falls High School in Bellows Falls, Vermont, but she did not complete her education since she decided to quit school and travel to New York City to start applying for acting jobs.

Leo spent the summers at her father’s home in the East Hampton neighborhood of Springs, New York.