Rachel Weisz

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Rachel Weisz (surname pronounced [vaɪs] or "vice") (born 7 March 1971) is an Academy Award and Golden Globe-winning, and BAFTA-nominated English actress.

Biography

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 read English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. She graduated with a 2:1. 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.[link] The couple reside in Brooklyn. Weisz previously dated actor Alessandro Nivola, actor Neil Morrissey, and director Sam Mendes.[link]

Awards

Year	Award	Film
2006	London Critics Circle Film Award for British Actress of the Year	The Constant Gardener
2006	British Independent Film Award for Best Actress	The Constant Gardener
2006	Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture	The Constant Gardener
2006	Screen Actors Guild Award for Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role	The Constant Gardener
2006	Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role	The Constant Gardener

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Nominations

Year	Award	Film
2006	BAFTA Film Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role	The Constant Gardener
2006	Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress	The Constant Gardener

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
2001	Beautiful Creatures	Petula
1999	Sunshine	Greta
1999	The Mummy	Evelyn Carnahan
1998	Swept from the Sea	Amy Foster
1996	Chain Reaction	Dr. Lily Sinclair

External links