RACHEL WEISZ

RACHEL WEISZ BIOGRAPHY
The following biography is from Wikipedia.org “The Free Encyclopedia.”



Rachel Weisz (surname pronounced "vice") (born March 7, 1971) is an Academy Award-nominated British actress.



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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 from Nazi persecution. Her mother, Edith, is a Vienna-born Austrian Catholic psychoanalyst and aspiring actress, who has Jewish and ¼ Italian ancestry.



Weisz read English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. She graduated with a 2:1— one mark off a First. 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.



Film 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 1996 with 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), About a Boy (2002), and Runaway Jury (2003). Her stage work includes the role of Catherine in a London production of Tenessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer and Evelyn in Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things at the Almeida Theatre (also film).



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. Weisz won 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 for her performance in the film. She has also been nominated for an Academy Award for her performance.



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.



Awards
Year Award Film

2006 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress The Constant Gardener

2006 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role The Constant Gardener



Private life
Weisz is engaged to the American film director Darren Aronofsky. The two are expecting a child in Spring 2006.



Selected Filmography
Year Title Role Other notes

2005 The Fountain Izzi

2005 The Constant Gardener Tessa Quayle Academy Award nomination - "Best Supporting Actress"

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

2000 Sunshine Greta

1999 The Mummy Evelyn Carnahan

1998 Swept from the Sea Amy Foster