Rachel Weisz

Rachel Weisz
Weisz photographed in 2007
Born	Rachel Hannah Weisz 7 March 1970 (1970-03-07) (age 40) London, England, UK
Years active	1993–present
Partner	Darren Aronofsky (2002-present)

Rachel Hannah Weisz (pronounced /ˈvaɪs/ "veyess", like the word "vice";^[1] born 7 March 1970)^[2] is an English screen and theatre actress.^[3] She gained wide public recognition after her portrayal of Evelyn "Evy" Carnahan-O'Connell in the films The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. In 2001, she starred opposite Hugh Grant in the hit About a Boy and continued to garner leading roles in Hollywood productions. Her performance in The Constant Gardener (2005) won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, along with other major motion picture awards.

Early life and background

Weisz was born in Westminster, London, England, and grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb.^[4] Her mother, Edith Ruth (née Teich), is a teacher turned psychotherapist who was born in Vienna, Austria.^[5] Her father, George Weisz, is a Hungarian-born inventor and engineer. Weisz's parents fled to England during World War II. Her father is Jewish and her mother has been described as either Catholic^[6] or Jewish (as well as "half-Italian").^[7][8] Weisz was raised in a "cerebral Jewish household"^[9] and has referred to herself as Jewish.^[10][11] She has a sister, Minnie, who is an artist.

Weisz was educated privately at prestigious independent schools for girls: North London Collegiate School, Benenden School, and St Paul's Girls' School. She then entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she graduated with a 2:1 in English. During her university 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 Fringe Festival for an improvised piece called Slight Possession.

Career

Screen

Weisz signing an autograph during the press conference for The Brothers Bloom on 2008.

Having already worked for television productions, with parts in such major UK television series as Inspector Morse (1993), Weisz started her cinema career in 1995 with Chain Reaction and then appeared in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty. She followed this work with more English films including My Summer with Des, Swept from the Sea, The Land Girls, and Michael Winterbottom's I Want You. Although she received favourable critical recognition for her work to this point, her breakout into wide audience recognition came from a popular serio-comic horror movie The Mummy, in which she played the lead female role alongside Brendan Fraser. She followed this up with two hits, The Mummy Returns (2001), which grossed $433m, even higher than the original, and About a Boy (2002) with Hugh Grant. She then appeared in Enemy at the Gates (2001), Runaway Jury (2003) and Constantine (2005).

In 2005, Weisz starred in Fernando Meirelles's 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 performance, Weisz won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress,^[12] the 2006 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role. In her home country, she was recognised as a leading role for the film according to the nomination from the BAFTA awards and winnings from the London Critics Circle Film Awards and British Independent Film Awards.

The same year, she starred in The Fountain and also provided the voice for Saphira in the fantasy film Eragon. Her subsequent films include the Wong Kar-wai-directed drama My Blueberry Nights (in which she played an "anti-Southern belle")^[12] and director Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom, in which she plays a wealthy American woman targeted by two con man brothers (Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo).^[12] She plays the lead role of Hypatia of Alexandria in the historical drama film Agora, released in October 2009.

Stage

Her breakthrough role was that of Gilda in Welsh director Sean Mathias's 1995 West End revival of Noel Coward's 1933 play Design for Living at the Gielgud Theatre. Her other stage work includes the role of Catherine in the Donmar's production of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer and Evelyn in Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things at the Almeida Theatre (also film) at its, then, temporary location in London's Kings Cross. In 2009, she played Blanche DuBois in Rob Ashford's Donmar revival of A Streetcar Named Desire,^[13] for which she won the Olivier Award and Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress.

Other

On 7 July 2007, Weisz presented at the American leg of Live Earth. She is represented by Independent Models in London.

Personal life

Weisz is engaged to American filmmaker and producer Darren Aronofsky. They have been dating since 2001. They have a son, Henry Chance, born on 31 May 2006 in New York City.^[14][15] The couple reside in the East Village in Manhattan. Weisz also serves as a muse to fashion designer Narciso Rodriguez.^[16]

Filmography

Awards and honours

Weisz gained numerous honours for her work in The Constant Gardener, which included: Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture, Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture. She was also nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Furthermore, the critical acclaim she received for her performance also garnered her the London Critics Circle Film Award for British Actress of the Year, the British Independent Film Award for Best Actress and the San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress. Additionally, she was nominated for the Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In 2006, Weisz was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.^[17] Weisz also received the BAFTA LA British Artist of the Year award in 2006.

In January 2010 at the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards in London she was named Best Actress 2009 for her performance as Blanche Dubois in the Donmar revival of A Streetcar Named Desire; she won the coveted 2010 Olivier Award for Best Actress for the same role.

References

External links

• Rachel Weisz at the Internet Movie Database
• Rachel Weisz at Yahoo! Movies
• Rachel Weisz at TV.com