Rachel Weisz was born in London, England in early 1971. Her mother, Edith, is a Viennese-born psychotherapist. Her father, George, is a Hungarian-born inventor who came up with a new type of artificial respirator. She was born into a rough history; both parents family's had been forced to flee their respective countries during the oppression during the 30s.
Rachel got started as a career woman early. During college at Trinity Hall in Cambridge and studying English, she established herself as a radical feminist. When she was barely in her teens she began modelling. At the age of 14, she tumed down a part in the film King David, in which Richard Gere smote the Philistines. This fact she finds trying to have to regurgitate again: "It was so-oooo long ago,' she sighs. It was through modeling that she made her way into acting. While studying at Cambridge University, where she formed the Talking Tongues theatre company. At the 1991 Edinburgh Festival, they won a Guardian Award for a play, called Slight Possession, which she wrote and acted in. This means that people will forever harp on about how clever she is, as if it's such a surprise to meet an actress who can punctuate in addition to walking and talking. "Shocking, isn't it?" she deadpans. In 1994, Rachel grabbed a role in Design for Living, a production in London that grabbed Rachel 'Best Newcomer Award' from the Critics' Circle.
Rachel Weisz first earned the attention of an international audience with her role as the spoiled daughter of a sculptor in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty (1996).The film focused greatly on Liv Tyler, who was in the midst of a meteoric rise, but Weisz poured in an excellent performance. Rachel was still far from stardom. But in 1999 Rachel's costarring role in the Brendan Fraser special effects debacle The Mummy, a filim low on script and high on action, opened to a whopping 43.4 million dollar box office take. The acting was a bit different than what Rachel had grown accustomed to. "We called it scoobydoobydoo acting. We ran around shouting 'I HATE MMMMMMUMMIES' and 'scoobydoobydoo'." The film called for a sequal, and fully propelled Rachel to the forefront of the Hollywood scene.
Rachel Weisz has proved herself to be more than just a big budget action star in films such as the noirish I Want You (1998), where she plays a stalked hairdresser, as the mafia trophywife Petula in Beautiful Creatures (2000) and a single mother in the comedy About a Boy. Rachel was most recently seen in as the sexy femme fatale Lily in Confidence and as Marlee in Runaway Jury and has several new projects coming up in 2004, including Envy, Constantine and The Constant Gardener. Rachel will be seen ontage again in 2004 in August Strindberg's "Miss Julie". She recently moved from London to New York to be close to her partner director Darren Aronofsky.
In the spring of 2005 news of Darren proposing to Rachel leaked out. Darren had phoned Rachel's father to ask for permission for his daughter's hand and then he proposed in the hubbub of New York's Times Square after the couple returned from filming his new movie The Fountain in Montreal. Of course, Rachel Weisz answered "yes" to the big question.
More great news came in January 2006 when Rachel announced that she was 5 months pregnant with the couples first child. January was a big month for Rachel in career vice as well when she took home the Golden Globe for her potrayal of Tessa Quayle in The Constant Gardener.
Lives in a US$450,000 London apartment and drives a Jaguar.
She has recently become a patron of The X Appeal, which is the official charity of the Royal College of Radiologists.
Her father invented respirators that supplied their own oxygen and machines that sense land mines.
Is the face of Revlon (2005).
"I found myself a sophisticated, educated American. He's not an actor. He's travelled the world. He knows where Europe is, unlike a lot of Americans. He's very cultured, but he's all man."
"You just have to play every scene honestly and forget about a reaction and what the audience is going to think. I think the more seriously you take something, the more funny it might be."
"People find out I'm an actress and I see that 'whore' look flicker across their eyes."
"I find Hollywood really toxic."
"I have absolutely no empathy for camels. I didn't care for being abused in the Middle East by those horrible, horrible, horrible creatures. They don't like people. It's not at all like the relationship between horses and humans."
Birth name: Rachel Weisz
Gender: Female
Profession: Actress
Height: 5' 7" (1.70 m)