Rachel Weisz
Rachel Weisz (surname pronounced [vaɪs] or "vice") (born 7 March 1971) is an Academy Award-winning English actress.
Biography
Early life
Weisz was born in London. Her father, George Weisz, is a Hungarian-born Jewish inventor whose family fled to England in order to escape Nazi persecution. Her mother, Edith, is a Vienna-born Austrian Catholic psychoanalyst and aspiring actress of 3/4 Ashkenazi Jewish and 1/4 Italian Catholic heritage. Weisz was raised Jewish.
Weisz read English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. She graduated with a 2:1. During her college years she appeared in various student productions, co-founding a student drama group called Cambridge Talking Tongues, which went on to win a Guardian Student Drama Award at the Edinburgh Festival for an improvised piece called Slight Possession.
Career
Her breakthrough role was that of Gilda in Welsh director Sean Mathias's 1995 West End revival of Noël Coward's 1933 play Design for Living at the Gielgud Theatre. Having already worked for television, Weisz started her cinema career in 1995 with Chain Reaction, then Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty. She followed this work with more English films including Swept from the Sea, The Land Girls, and Michael Winterbottom's I Want You. Since then she has starred in a number of films including The Mummy (1999), Enemy at the Gates (2001), About a Boy (2002), Runaway Jury (2003) and Constantine (2005). Her stage work includes the role of Catherine in a London production of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer and Evelyn in Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things at the Almeida Theatre (also film). In a recent interview, Ms. Weisz expressed her admiration for Harry Houdini, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jackie Onassis, amongst others, but it is for singer Elvis Presley that she keeps her greatest love. .
In 2005, Weisz starred in The Constant Gardener, a film adaptation of a John le Carré thriller of the same title set in the slums of Kibera and Loiyangalani, Kenya. For this role, Weisz won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the 2006 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and the 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.
In 2006, Weisz will star in The Fountain, written and directed by her fiancé, Darren Aronofsky. In the same year, she plans to star in a New York production of August Strindberg's Miss Julie, playing the titular role.
Personal life
Weisz is engaged to American film director Darren Aronofsky and they are expecting a child in May 2006. Weisz has previously dated actor Alessandro Nivola, actor Neil Morrissey, and director Sam Mendes.[1]
Awards
Selected filmography
| Year | Title | Role |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | The Fountain | Izzi |
| 2005 | The Constant Gardener | Tessa Quayle |
| 2005 | Constantine | Angela Dodson/Isabel Dodson |
| 2004 | Envy | Debbie Dingman |
| 2003 | Runaway Jury | Marlee |
| 2003 | The Shape of Things | Evelyn Ann Thompson |
| 2003 | Confidence | Lily |
| 2002 | About A Boy | Rachel |
| 2001 | The Mummy Returns | Evelyn Carnahan O'Connell/Princess Nefertiri |
| 2001 | Enemy at the Gates | Tania Chernova |
| 1999 | Sunshine | Greta |
| 1999 | The Mummy | Evelyn Carnahan |
| 1998 | Swept from the Sea | Amy Foster |
External links
Websites
Interviews
- 1971 births
- Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
- Best Supporting Actress Oscar
- British film actors
- British stage actors
- British television actors
- Burberry models
- English film actors
- English stage actors
- English television actors
- Italian-British people
- Jewish-British people
- Jewish-English people
- Living people
- Londoners