Rachel Weisz

Birth Name: Rachel Hannah Weisz

Date of Birth: 7th.March 1970

Birth Place: Westminster, England, UK

Father: George Weisz, is a Hungarian-born inventor and engineer whose family fled to England to escape Nazi persecution. Weisz's father is Jewish.

Mother: Edith Ruth (née Teich), is a Vienna-born Austrian teacher turned psychotherapist.

Siblings: A sister, Minnie Weisz, who is an artist.

Schooling: Weisz was educated at the private North London Collegiate School. She later boarded at the private Benenden School and then enrolled at the private St Paul's Girls' School. She then entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she graduated with a 2:1 in English. During her university years she appeared in various student productions, co-founding a student drama group called Cambridge Talking Tongues, which went on to win a Guardian Student Drama Award at the Edinburgh Festival for an improvised piece called Slight Possession.

Start of Career:

Screen---Having already worked for television, with parts in major UK series such as Inspector Morse (1993), Weisz started her cinema career in 1995 with Chain Reaction and then appeared in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty.

Stage---Her breakthrough role was that of Gilda in Welsh director Sean Mathias's 1995 West End revival of Noel Coward's 1933 play Design for Living at the Gielgud Theatre.

Model: On 7 July 2007, Weisz presented at the American leg of Live Earth. She is represented by Independent Models in London.

Personal Life: Weisz is engaged to American filmmaker and producer Darren Aronofsky. They have been dating since 2002. They have a son, Henry Chance, born on 31 May 2006 in New York City. The couple reside in the East Village in Manhattan. Weisz also serves as a muse to fashion designer Narciso Rodriguez.

Awards:

Weisz gained numerous honours for her work in The Constant Gardener, which included: Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture, Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture. She was also nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Furthermore, the critical acclaim she received for her performance also garnered her the London Critics Circle Film Award for British Actress of the Year, the British Independent Film Award for Best Actress and the San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress. Additionally, she was nominated for the Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In 2006, Weisz was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Weisz also received the BAFTA LA British Artist of the Year award in 2006.

Films:

1995 Death Machine

1996 Chain Reaction

     Stealing Beauty

1997 Bent 

     Going All the Way

1997 Swept from the Sea

     I Want You 

1998 The Land Girls

1999 The Mummy

2000 Beautiful Creatures 

     This Is Not an Exit: The Fictional World of Bret Easton Ellis

2001 Enemy at the Gates

     The Mummy Returns

2002 About a Boy

2003 Confidence 

     The Shape of Things

     Runaway

2004 Envy

2005 Constantine

     The Constant Gardener

2006 The Fountain

2007 Fred Claus

     My Blueberry Nights

2008 Definitely, Maybe

2009 The Brothers Bloom

     The Lovely Bones    post-production

     Agora     post-production

2010 Dirt Music     pre-production