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Rachel Hannah Weisz (; born 7 March 1970) is a British actress. Known for her roles in independent films and blockbusters, she has received several awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Laurence Olivier Award. Weisz began acting in stage and television productions in the early 1990s, and made her film debut in Death Machine (1994). She won a Critics' Circle Theatre Award for her role in the 1994 revival of Noël Coward's play Design for Living, and went on to appear in the 1999 Donmar Warehouse production of Tennessee Williams' drama Suddenly Last Summer. Her film breakthrough came with her starring role as Evelyn Carnahan in the Hollywood action films The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001). Weisz went on to star in several films of the 2000s, including Enemy at the Gates (2001), About a Boy (2002), Runaway Jury (2003), Constantine (2005), The Fountain (2006), The Lovely Bones (2009) and The Whistleblower (2010). For her performance as an activist in the 2005 thriller The Constant Gardener, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and for playing Blanche DuBois in a 2009 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, she won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress. In the 2010s, Weisz continued to star in big-budget films such as the action film The Bourne Legacy (2012) and the fantasy film Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) and achieved critical acclaim for her performances in the independent films The Deep Blue Sea (2011), Denial (2016), and The Favourite (2018). For her portrayal of Sarah Churchill in The Favourite, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and received a second Academy Award nomination. Weisz portrayed Melina Vostokoff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Black Widow (2021) and starred as twin obstetricians in the thriller miniseries Dead Ringers (2023). Early life and family Weisz was born on 7 March 1970 in Westminster, London, and grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Her father, George Weisz, was a Hungarian Jewish mechanical engineer. Her mother, Edith Ruth (née Teich), was a teacher-turned-psychotherapist originally from Vienna, Austria. Her parents emigrated to the United Kingdom as children around 1938, prior to the outbreak of World War II, in order to escape the Nazis. Her maternal grandfather's ancestry was Austrian Jewish; her maternal grandmother was Catholic and of Italian ancestry. The scholar and social activist James Parkes helped her mother's family to leave Austria for England. Weisz's mother was raised in the Catholic church and formally converted to Judaism upon marrying Weisz's father. Weisz's maternal grandfather was Alexander Teich, a Jewish activist who had been a secretary of the World Union of Jewish Students. Her younger sister Minnie Weisz is a visual artist. Weisz's parents valued the arts; they encouraged their children to form opinions of their own by engaging their participation in family debates. Weisz left North London Collegiate School and attended Benenden School for one year, completing A-levels at St Paul's Girls School. Known for being an "English rose", Weisz began modelling at the age of 14. In 1984, she gained public attention when she turned down an offer to star in King David with Richard Gere. Weisz went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she read English. She graduated with upper second-class honours. During her university years she was a contemporary of Sacha Baron Cohen, Alexander Armstrong, Emily Maitlis, Sue Perkins, Mel Giedroyc, Richard Osman and Ben Miller (whom she briefly dated), and appeared in various student dramatic productions, co-founding a student drama group called Cambridge Talking Tongues. The group won a Guardian Student Drama Award at the 1991 Edinburgh Festival Fringe for an improvised piece written by Weisz herself called Slight Possession, directed by David Farr. Career 1990s In 1992, Weisz appeared in the television film Advocates II, followed by roles in the Inspector Morse episode "Twilight of the Gods", and the BBC's steamy period drama Scarlet and Black, alongside Ewan McGregor. Dirty Something, a BBC Screen Two, hour-long television film made in 1992, was Weisz's first film. Weisz's breakthrough role on the stage was that of Gilda in Sean Mathias's 1994 revival of Noël Coward's Design for Living at the Gielgud Theatre, for which she received the London Critics' Circle Award for the most promising newcomer. Her portrayal was described as "wonderful" by a contemporary review. Weisz started her film career with a minor role in the 1994 film Death Machine; her first major role came in the 1996 film Chain Reaction. The film received mostly negative reviews–it holds a 16% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was a minor financial success. She next appeared as Miranda Fox in Stealing Beauty, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, where she was first labelled an "English rose". Weisz found roles in the 1997 American drama Swept from the Sea, the 1998 British television comedy-drama My Summer with Des, Michael Winterbottom's crime film I Want You, and David Leland's The Land Girls, based on Angela Huth's book of the same name. In 1999, Weisz played Greta in the historical film Sunshine. The same year, her international breakthrough came with the 1999 adventure film The Mummy, in which she played the female lead opposite Brendan Fraser. Her character, Evelyn Carnahan, is an English Egyptologist, who undertakes an expedition to the fictional ancient Egyptian city of Hamunaptra to discover an ancient book. Variety criticised the direction of the film, writing: "(the actors) have been directed to broad, undisciplined performances [...] Buffoonery hardly seems like Weisz's natural domain, as the actress strains for comic effects that she can't achieve". She followed this up with the sequel The Mummy Returns in 2001, which grossed an estimated $433 million worldwide, (equivalent to $745 million in 2023 dollars) higher than the original's $260 million (equal to $476 million in 2023 dollars). Also in 1999, she played the role of Catherine in the Donmar Warehouse production of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer, What's on Stage called her "captivating", stating that she brought "a degree of credibility to a difficult part". The same year, Weisz appeared in Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things at the Almeida Theatre, then temporarily located in London's King's Cross, for which she received a Theatre World Award. CurtainUp called her "a sophisticated, independent artist" with "great stage presence". 2000s In 2000, she portrayed Petula in the film Beautiful Creatures, followed by 2001's Enemy at the Gates, and the 2002 comedy-drama About a Boy, with Hugh Grant, based on Nick Hornby's 1998 novel. In 2003, she played Marlee in the adaptation of John Grisham's legal thriller novel The Runaway Jury; and starred in the film adaptation of the romantic comedy-drama play The Shape of Things. In 2004, Weisz appeared in the com.... Discover the Becca Ludlum popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Becca Ludlum books.