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Life of Rachel Weisz / Summary
Birthplace: LONDON
THE MUMMY !999), ENEMY AT THE GATES (2001), ABOUT A BOY (2002), RUNAWAY JURY (2003), CONSTANTINE (2005)
Smart and Sexy, Rachel Weisz has a healthy disdain for the superficialities of stardom. "People find out I’m an actress and I see that ‘whore’ look flicker across their eyes… I find Hollywood really toxic."
Rachel Weisz was born in London on 7 March 1971 to an Austrian-Hungarian couple. Both her parents are Jewish and were brought to England before WW2 to escape the onrushing Holocaust, starting their new lives with nothing. Father George, from Hungary, became an inventor, most notably of medical devices, including a life-saving respiratory machine. Mother Edith, from Vienna, became a psychoanalyst. Rachel also has a younger sister. Rachel is reluctant to talk about being Jewish, explaining that her religion is “very personal”. She does, however, say that growing up was like being in a Woody Allen movie – with lots of jokes about shrinks.
The name is pronounced Vice - she actually considered changing it because she was tired of hearing Wheeze and Wise, but quite rightly thought Vice would make her sound like a porn star.
Her psychoanalyst mother encouraged her to enter acting, and she was a model at 14. Before her parents separated, though, Rachel was already working. Edith was ambitious for her and, having wanted to act herself, pushed her daughter in that direction. Sending a holiday snap to Harpers And Queen, she got Rachel a job as a model. Spotted by casting directors, at 14 she was offered a part in Richard Gere's King David but, not wanting her schoolmates to hate her for being different, she turned it down.
Nevertheless, bowing to both their wishes to finish her education, she completed A-levels at St. Paul’s, studied English at Cambridge University – while also becoming involved in student theatre productions – and planned to become a barrister. At Cambridge, she studied hard. She did dissertations on Katherine Mansfield, Henry James and women writers in the Deep South, eventually ending up by falling a couple of points short of a First Class degree. She'd found love too, spending the last two years of college living with Ben Miller - former president of the famous Footlights club and later the co-star of the outrageous Armstrong & Miller comedy show.
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Rachel Weisz's Latest Films:
The Lady from Shanghai (2008)
The Colossus (2007)...Olive Schreiner
My Blueberry Nights (2007)
The Fountain (2006)...Izzi
The Constant Gardener (2005)...Tessa Quayle
- aka Ewige Gärtner, Der (Germany)
Constantine (2005)...Angela Dodson/Isabel Dodson
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