Rachel Weisz Biography And Filmography:

English movie actress Rachel Weisz stood out from the group of budding U.K. actresses in the 1990s with her striking good looks. Weisz founded a pioneering comedy group at Cambridge, but her film career centered on bold, independent dramas until Hollywood let her into the business with roles in numerous comedy and adventure chartbusters. Weisz was officially ushered into Hollywood's tops roles when she won Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA awards for her starring role in the movie “The Constant Gardner” (2005)

Rachel Weisz was born on March 7, 1970 and raised in London’s inventive and academically leaning suburb of Hampstead. Her parents were both Jewish emigrants who had escaped Nazi rule – her father, a scientific inventor who had to flee Hungary; her mother, an Austrian psychoanalyst. Weisz and her sister, Minnie, grew up under the influence of educated parents who loved theater. 

Weisz was not anxious to trade her normal teen life for the fame of Hollywood; instead continuing her scholastic interest at Cambridge University’s Trinity Hall. While majoring in English and cranking out inspiring papers on great British and American literature, she considered changing to law studies, while also starting to appear in regional theatrical productions. Weisz finished her English degree and was guaranteed a spot at drama school, but she had started getting small television roles; instead choosing to go with the flow of her growing actting career.

A co-starring role with Ewan McGregor in the BBC miniseries "The Scarlet and The Black" (1993) led to Weisz’s return to the West End in a revival of Noel Coward’s “Design for Living,” which won her a Critic’s Circle Award for Best Newcomer. Weisz made the jump to the movie screen with a small role in Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci's "Stealing Beauty" (1996) with Liv Tyler, and in a supporting role, opposite Keanu Reeves, as a scientist trying to save the world in “Chain Reaction” (1995) with Morgan Freeman. 

Her celebrity profile and reputation as a smart and creative actress grew with a series of British films including the Joseph Conrad adaptation “Swept from the Sea” (1997) with Ian McKellen, Michael Winterbottom’s hot “I Want You” (1997), and the WWII comedy “The Land Girls” (1998), the story of three young women and the events that would change their lives. The friendships that would stay with them forever and the loves that would change their hearts. In 1999, Rachel Weisz returned to the West End in one of her best theater performances in Tennessee Williams’ Southern gothic drama “Suddenly Last Summer.” 

Rachel Weisz was still somewhat unknown in Hollywood circles until her high-profile breakout as a gawky but courageous librarian opposite Brendan Fraser in the blockbuster "The Mummy" (1999). The movie was not quite at the level of her ambitious art house work, but it showed Weisz’s amazing comic talent and a flexibility that kept her from being typecast as an earnest British dramatic actress. Her next two movies did not enjoy nearly the success and attention as “The Mummy.” The romantic war drama "Sunshine" (1999), where Weisz co-starred with Ralph Fiennes as an adulterous wife involved with her talented brother-in-law, won multiple award nominations. 

The comedy thriller “Beautiful Creatures” (2000) was universally criticized for not to delivering the “Thelma & Louise” (1991) type action it promised, while "Enemy at the Gates" (2001) with Jude Law, was both well received by critics and a modest  international success. In the movie, Weisz teamed with another Fiennes brother, Joseph, to play a Russian soldier, fighting to save Stalingrad during WWII. That same year, she revisited her role as the prissy librarian in the box office sequel, "The Mummy Returns" (2001).

In 2001, Weisz was cast in the role of a single mom and possible romantic love interest for Hugh Grant in "About a Boy" (2002), and then turned femme fatale for the crime thriller "Confidence" (2003), giving a sexy performance as the dangerous girl stuck in the middle. Rachel Weisz continued her Hollywood success alongside Dustin Hoffman, John Cusack and Gene Hackman in "Runaway Jury" (2003); a movie adaptation of John Grisham's legal thriller, portraying a mysterious woman involved in a deadly effort to change a verdict. The actress then appeared as Ben Stiller's wife in the comedy "Envy" (2004) with Jack Black. Weisz returned to horror-adventure movies with the comic book inspired "Constantine" (2005) with Shia Labeouf, portraying a cop pulled into the world of occult investigator John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) after the mysterious death of her sister.

In director Fernando Meirelles' adaptation of the John LeCarre novel, Rachel Weisz played the attractive but politically outspoken wife of a self-righteous British diplomat in Africa (Ralph Fiennes) whose murder sends him on a journey to find the evil, mysterious secrets that led to her death. Weisz gave a superb performance in this heartbreaking and poetic human drama set in a colorful, hectic African backdrop. Weisz won a Golden Globe Award, an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, as well as both a BAFTA and a Critic’s Circle Awards.  Weisz then appeared at the 78th Academy Awards ceremony pregnant with her first child, that of fiancé and film director Darren Aronofsky.

Next, Rachel Weisz was hired and cast in the sci-fi drama “The Fountain,” a fantasy spanning over one thousand years and three parallel stories. "The Fountain" is a story of love, death, spirituality, and the fragility of our existence in this world. She then co-starred in the Vince Vaughn holiday vehicle “Fred Claus” (2007), about a man Fred Claus, Santa's bitter older brother who is forced to move to the North Pole. Rachel the teamed with Jude Law again for the romantic comedy "My Blueberry Nights" (2007), where a young woman takes a soul-searching journey across America to resolve her questions about love while encountering a series of offbeat characters along the way.

Weisz stayed with romantic comedy with “Definitely, Maybe,” portraying a go-getting journalist and prior lover of single dad Ryan Reynolds, and then was cast in the crime drama "The Brothers Bloom" (2008) starring opposite Adrien Brody,  about the best con men in the world, who are swindling millionaires with complex scenarios of lust and intrigue. Now they've decided to take on one last job - showing a beautiful and eccentric heiress (Rachel Weisz) the time of her life with a romantic adventure that takes them around the world. Weisz was moving up to the big-leagues of Hollywood movie roles, and every producers wanted her in their movie.

Rachel Weisz then starred alongside MW and SS in the dramatic horror thriller "The Lovely Bones" (2009), about a young girl who was brutally raped and murdered and watches the effects of her death on her family from Heaven, as her parents drift apart, her father becomes obsessed with vengeance and her sister grows into the woman she would never be. A starring role in the historical drama "Agora" (2009) followed, set in Roman Egypt and concerning a slave who turns to the rising tide of Christianity in the hopes of pursuing freedom while also falling in love with his master, the famous female philosophy professor and atheist Hypatia of Alexandria.

Weisz wrapped her year with the dramatic "Dirt Music" (2009) starring along side Colin Farrell, and based on the novel by Tim Winton. The film focuses on the lives of an alcoholic mother and a gloomy poacher living in a remote fishing village in Western Australia. After the success of the original "Sin City", there of course had to be a sequel to capitalize on the franchise, and Weisz obliged by appearing in "Sin City 2" (2010) with Antonio Banderas and starring Jessica Alba, where in the dark bowels of Sin City, a man plans to have his vengeance against the woman who betrayed him, Ava Lord. The actress wrapped her year starring with Susan Sarandon, Ian McKellan and Colin Firth in the biographical thriller "The Colossus" (2008), about an ornithologist at the turn of the 20th century who transports hundreds of songbirds to an ailing prime minister in South Africa and falls for a political activist trying to stop the impending Boer War.