Rachel Weisz


Name: Rachel Hannah Weisz
Born: 7 March 1971 (37) London, England Years active: 1993 - present Domestic partner(s): Darren Aronofsky
Awards won: 1. Best Supporting Actress 2006 The Constant Gardener 2. Golden Globe Awards Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture 2006 The Constant Gardener 3. Screen Actors Guild Awards Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture 2006 The Constant Gardener

Rachel Hannah Weisz (pronounced /ˈreɪtʃəl ˈvaɪs/ "vice"; born 7 March, in 1970 or 1971) is an Academy Award-winning English actress. She became well-known after her role as Evelyn "Evy" Carnahan-O'Connell in the Hollywood films The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, and has since continued appearing in major film roles.

Life and career

Early life

Weisz was born in London, England and grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Her mother, Edith Ruth (née Teich), is a Vienna-born Austrian teacher turned psychotherapist. Her father, George Weisz, is a Hungarian-born inventor whose family fled to England to escape Nazi persecution. Weisz's father is Ashkenazi Jewish and her mother has been referred to as either Catholic, Jewish, having Jewish ancestry,[8] and being of part Italian descent. Weisz was raised in a cerebral Jewish household and refers to herself as Jewish. Weisz has a sister, Minnie Weisz, who is an artist.

Weisz was educated at North London Collegiate School. She was then sent to Benenden School and eventually settled in 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 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 Noel Coward's 1933 play Design for Living at the Gielgud Theatre. Having already worked for television, with parts in major UK series such 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. Since then she has starred in a number of films including The Mummy Returns (2001), which grossed higher than the original, as well as 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) at its, then, temporary location in London's Kings Cross.

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 role, Weisz won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, 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.

In 2006 Weisz was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The same year, she starred in The Fountain and also provided the voice for Saphira in the much-criticized film Eragon. Her 2008 films include the Wong Kar-wai-directed drama My Blueberry Nights (in which she played an "anti-Southern belle") and director Rian Johnson's upcoming The Brothers Bloom, in which she plays a wealthy American woman targeted by two con man brothers (Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo).

On 7 July 2007, Weisz presented at the American leg of Live Earth.

She is signed to Independent Models in London.

Personal life

Weisz is engaged to American film-maker Darren Aronofsky. They have been dating since 2002. They have a son, Henry Chance, born on May 31, 2006 in New York City. The couple reside in the East Village in Manhattan. They are considering getting married in a traditional wedding ceremony at the oldest synagogue in New York.

Filmography

Year Film Role Other notes
1995 Death Machine Junior Executive
1996 Chain Reaction Dr. Lily Sinclair
Stealing Beauty Miranda Fox
1997 Bent Prostitute
Going All the Way Marty Pilcher
1997 Swept from the Sea Amy Foster
I Want You Helen
1998 The Land Girls Ag (Agapanthus)
1999 The Mummy Evelyn "Evy" Carnahan
Sunshine Greta
2000 Beautiful Creatures Petula
This Is Not an Exit: The Fictional World of Bret Easton Ellis Lauren Hynde
2001 Enemy at the Gates Tania Chernova
The Mummy Returns Evelyn Carnahan O'Connell/Princess Nefertiri
2002 About a Boy Rachel
2003 Confidence Lily
The Shape of Things Evelyn Ann Thompson
Runaway Jury Marlee
2004 Envy Debbie Dingman
2005 Constantine Angela Dodson/Isabel Dodson
The Constant Gardener Tessa Quayle 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, Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
2006 The Fountain Izzi
Eragon Saphira (voice)
2007 Fred Claus Wanda
My Blueberry Nights Sue Lynn
2008 Definitely, Maybe Summer Hartley
The Brothers Bloom Penelope awaiting release
2009 The Lovely Bones Abigail Salmon post-production
Agora Hypatia post-production
Dirt Music Georgie Jutland pre-production
2010 Sin City 2 Ava Lord pre-production

Other awards

Weisz received great critical and public acclaim for her role in The Constant Gardener. She won 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. She also received the BAFTA LA British Artist of the Year award in 2006.

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