Rachel Weisz

(1970 - )

Rachel Weisz was born on March 7, 1971, in London. Her father, George Weisz, fled to England from Hungary in the 1930s to escape Nazi persecution. Although her mother, Edith, was of Catholic descent, Rachel Weisz was raised Jewish. Weisz attended Cambridge University and acted in many on campus performances.

Weisz’s breakthrough role was that of Gilda in Sean Mathias’s 1995 play Design for Living. She began her movie career in 1995 with a role in Chain Reaction and Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty. Weisz has starred in a number of films including The Mummy (1999), About a Boy (2002), Runaway Jury (2003) and Constantine (2005). Her stage performances also include Catherine in Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer and Evelyn in Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things.

In 2005, Weisz starred in The Constant Gardener, a film set in Kibera and Loiyangalani, Kenya. For this role, Weisz won the 2006 Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. She also won the 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role. In 2006, Weisz will star in The Fountain, written and directed by her fiancé, Darren Aronofsky.

On May 31, 2006, Weisz gave birth to her first child Henry Chance.

Sources: Wikipedia; Picture by Michael Weiner