◆ Surname: Rachel Weisz
Rachel Weisz
Rachel Weisz
◆ Date of Birth: March 7, 1971
◆ Place of Birth: London, England
◆ Primary Identity: actress
◆ Character Bio:
British Temperament Actress Rachel Weisz isn't just beautiful, she's also very brainy. A graduate of Cambridge University, where she majored in English Literature, Rachel Weisz's mother's love of the theater led her to pursue a career in acting from an early age. Born on March 7, 1971 in London, England, Vicky's mother was a psychiatrist from Vienna and her father was an inventor of Hungarian descent. She was an active child from an early age, and only had a moment of peace and quiet when she and her mother would go to the movies together, which instilled in her a love of acting. As a student, she formed a theater group called Talking Tongues with her friends and participated in many theater productions. She produced and acted in a number of experimental plays, which toured many parts of the UK and won the Student Drama Award at the Edinburgh Festival, and in 1994, she was awarded the Critic's Circle Award for Design For Living for her outstanding performance on stage. In 1994, she won the Critic's Circle Award for Newcomer for her performance in Design For Living, and in 1996, Vézquez began to make a name for herself with a role in director Bernardo Bertolucci's The Scent of a Woman. But her first real Hollywood debut was opposite Keanu Levy in Chain Reaction, and she has also appeared in TV productions with Ewan McGregor. Vicky has no limits to her acting, and her performance as a shy virgin girl trying to give her first time in "The Earth Girl" was a hit with the audience. She also appeared in "Passionate Accident" directed by Mike Winterbottom, with Alexandra Nivola as her co-star. Other credits include "Beyond the Sea" with Vincent Perez, "Sunshine" with Ralph Fiennes, "Young and Dangerous" with Ben Affleck***, and the war movie "Soldier of Fortune" with Jude Law. Although Vicky has worked with so many well-known actors, she is best known for her work in the super-selling 1999 film The Mummy. Originally a dark horse that went unnoticed before its release, the film was released to a staggering box office, ranking 31st among all-time movie sellers, and the film also made a name for its leading man, Brendan Fischer. It also opened up their global popularity. In 2005, Vicky starred in "Hellraiser" and "The Immortal Gardener". With the outstanding performance in "The Immortal Gardener", Vicky won the 2005 British Independent Film Award for Best Actress, and won the 63rd Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. 2006, Vicky and Hugh Jackman co-starred in "Precious Springs" selected for the Venice Film Festival, in which Vicky again had a stunning performance.
◆ Timeline
My Blueberry Nights 2007
Dragon Rider 2006
The Fountain 2006
The Constant Gardener 2005
Hellsbane Constantine 2005
<Hell's Detective Constantine 2005
The Ultimate Bitch Envy 2004
Runaway Jury 2003
Confidence 2003
The Shape of Things 2003
Tomb Raider 2 The Mummy Returns 2001
Enemy at the Gates 2001
Spicy Chase: Beautiful Creatures 2000
Sunshine 1999
Sunshine Lover. Sunshine 1999
Tomb Raider The Mummy 1999
Passionate Accident I Want You 1998
The Land Girls 1998
Life's Unbearable Love Bent 1997
Youthfulness Going All the Way 1997
Youth Lost. The Way 1997
Swept from the Sea 1997
Stealing Beauty 1996
Chain Reaction 1996
Death Machine 1995
The Lady from Shanghai 1995
The Orange British Academy Film The Orange British Academy Film
Rachel Weisz is the daughter of a Hungarian Jewish inventor and an Australian psychiatrist. She is the daughter of a Hungarian Jewish inventor and an Australian psychiatrist, with black hair, a slender figure, and a natural oriental beauty. She first caught the world's attention in director Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty, then rose to stardom with the "Mummy" franchise, and in 2001 she scored a hit with "Enemy at the Gates". In 2001, she had a big hit with "Enemy at the Gates" and "Beautiful Creatures," which made her famous.
Rachel Weisz is truly something. Her natural beauty goes without saying, and her sense of humor is well known, as well as her intelligence, which is unparalleled. As early as when she was studying at Cambridge University, she was the princess in everyone's eyes, and naturally had many suitors. Vyse is said to have been rejected by some of the biggest films because she was too pretty, which more or less limited the recognition of her acting skills.
Pretty Egyptologist
In the movie world, people have never been able to place Rachel Weisz in a precise position. In her early (and mostly unsuccessful) work, Weisz has played a hairdresser ("Accident of Passion"), a scruffily dressed woman in the 1940s ("Daughters of the Earth"), and a co-starring role with Keanor Reeves in the not-quite-successful scientific suspense film ("Chain Reaction"). Not long ago, she completed two more films. One was playing Thelma of Scotland in Born to be Wild; the other was playing a grumpy single mom in Single Parent Plugged In. "The truth is, I read quite a few scripts. But unless it's a script that makes me very passionate about performing, I won't act in it and I'll keep waiting. Before acting in Tomb Raider, I never thought 'I'm going to do a really big movie'. After reading the script, I thought, 'This is a really interesting character.' She's a librarian in an action movie.' Then they told me it meant a four-month filming assignment in Morocco." Viz recalled.
By the fact that Viz herself mentions the "Tomb Raider" flick perhaps suggests that, of all the films she's starred in, it's the only one (along with "Tomb Raider II The Mummy Returns," of course) that she herself recognizes more. In that movie, she was paired with Brendan Fischer in the role of Evelyn, a pretty and bookish Egyptian expert with a spunky nature who does some funny and hilarious things from time to time. "But smart women in Hollywood films aren't likable," she adds, "I mean, it would be boring to be just a Dr. so-and-so with a pair of glasses."
Rachel Weisz should have no problem making money at the box office over the next few months. This winter will see the release of movie versions of her "Runaway Jury," "Envy" and "Human Sculpture. However, the first to hit theaters should be The World of Deception, a film similar to Deception Within a Deception, which also stars Edward Burns, Dustin Hoffman and Andy Garcia. Viz plays a - to use the lingo - "lonely woman" in the film, putting Neal's cinematic style to good use. "You know, an extraordinarily beautiful, smoking woman, which is so much fun." Viz said. What's more, in this movie, as in her other new films, Rachel Weisz plays an American.
Intends to make her home in the U.S.
In 1997, Viz had a past while filming in Hollywood ("a boyfriend I used to date used to live here," in Viz's own words) and was in a slump until she returned to England. For her role in Tomb Raider, she was paid a million pounds, making her one of the most expensive actresses in Britain (though she still pales in comparison to American actors, of course). Vyse, 32, has to commute between New York and London. Recently, she purchased a property in Manhattan. This was as much for her personal life as it was for work. "You could say that on the one hand, it was suggested by my boyfriend." Viz said, (her boyfriend is said to be the popular American movie director Darren Aronofsky) "But I had always intended to live there before." Last year, Viz spent eight months filming in the US. Seems like it would make sense to make a home in New York.
But, thankfully, fame hasn't put too much pressure on Viz. Although a lot of small-time journalists have been creating stories about her, she's still able to keep her head above water. As an amateur photographer, she recalled a strange encounter outside her home. She was taking pictures of her sister, who was a singer, when a tabloid photographer ambushed her in the neighborhood. To add to her amusement, the person the tabloid photographer had intended to sneak a shot of was not her, but her neighbor, Amanda Holden. "Usually, there are countless members of the paparazzi standing by the door." Viz said.
Won't give up stage plays
Light-skinned, with the bushy eyebrows of a cool Elizabeth Taylor, Rachel Weisz is very much an exotic woman: she looks a bit Central European. Not bad, her father was a Hungarian Jew and her mother a Viennese Catholic. To escape the Nazi killings, they both fled to north London. (Vyse played a Jewish soldier in Soldier Down, a historical film about the defense of Stalingrad.) When she was 15, her father and mother split up. The former was a pharmaceutical inventor, while the latter was a psychotherapist. They had different influences on Vybz's later upbringing. Her father wanted her to get a good education, while her bohemian mother wanted her to pursue a career in print modeling.
At 14, Rachel Weisz was discovered by talent scouts for a role in the biblical drama "King David. She had refused to act alongside Richard Gere, demanding a "normal childhood", a move that surprised people with her precociousness. At St. Paul's Girls' School and Cambridge University, reading was her main focus. But in 1992, after an original production by her student company won a prize at the Edinburgh Festival, Vyse began to get her own agent. Within just two years, without any formal training, she had won the British Theatre Critics' Circle Award for Best Newcomer for her stage play Ideas for Survival. Stage plays remain her favorite art form. It is noteworthy that after each movie, Vyse feels the need to return to the stage in London for a period of quiet time. The stage plays Suddenly Last Summer and Human Sculpture are examples of her inter-film breaks. "I'll always do stage plays." She says.
Forcing herself to take a break
The movie version of "Human Sculpture," which just opened in the U.S., marks the collision of the two worlds of Rachel Weisz's stage play and movie. The play, which was a sensation when it opened at the Almeida Theater in 2001, came to Broadway and is now being brought to the screen, retaining the original cast from that year's stage production: Viz, Paul Rudd, Gretchen Moore and Frederick Weller. The movie cost $3 million dollars and was shot in just 20 days. In this movie, Vyse made her debut as a producer. "I'm afraid I crossed the line." She says, "Only because Neil made me an offer. It's a great feeling to work with a filmmaker who is very much his own man."
Back in the year, it didn't seem so clear what the future of Viz's acting career would be. Though Viz came to prominence and attention for her daring performance in Bernardo Bertolucci's "Stealing Fragrance," it was followed by "Chain Reaction" that pretty much cut her movie life short. Since then she has made a number of films that were mostly lesser known, such as, "Beyoncé" and "All the Way". Then came 1999's Tomb Raider. It was thanks to this big budget movie that Vybz came back into the limelight and proved her box office appeal once again. At first, a number of her friends in the movie industry scoffed at Viz's choice to star in such a movie that resembled comic book stunt effects, but she knew exactly what she was doing. And, if they ever pry open the sarcophagus, she'd consider rejoining the cast of Tomb Raider III. For now, the only reason she's considering slowing down is the stress of her job. "Last year, everything was going surprisingly well." She said, "But now, I have to force myself to stop working and take some time off."
The newly released movie will undoubtedly raise Vybz's profile. But no matter how famous she becomes, people never know the correct pronunciation of her name. Every day, she can cite a long list of mispronunciations like "Wheeze", "Weeeeee-iiis", and a myriad of others, so Vybz is thinking of getting herself a new name.