Rachel Weisz
Rachel Weisz (surname
pronounced or "vice"; it means "White" in English) (born
7 March 1971) is an
Academy Award and
Golden Globe-winning, and
BAFTA-nominated
English actress.
Early life
Weisz was born in
London in 1971. 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 was educated at
St. Paul's Girls' School and
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 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, with strong parts in major UK series such as
Inspector Morse (1993), Weisz started her cinema career in 1995 with
Chain Reaction and then appeared
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 her home country, she was recognized as a leading role for the film according to the nomination from the
BAFTA Film Awards and winnings from the
London Critics Circle Film Awards and
British Independent Film Awards.
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 filmmaker Darren Aronofsky. They have a son, Henry Chance, born on
May 31,
2006.[
1] The couple reside in
Brooklyn. Weisz previously dated actor
Alessandro Nivola, actor
Neil Morrissey, and director
Sam Mendes.[
2]
Websites
*
*
Interviews
*
Weisz interview, 2005, Netribution*
Weisz interview, 2005, Cinema Confidential News*
Weisz interview, 2003, Cinemas Online*
Weisz interview (with Paul Rudd & Gretchen Mol), 2003, Tribeca Film Festival*
Weisz interview, 1999, Guardian UK*
Weisz interview, 2005 for
Constantine at
Dread Central
