Living". In 1996, she made the move to the big screen in two very different films: in Bernardo Bertolucci's "Stealing Beauty", and in Andrew Davis' "Chain Reaction". In the former, she was the spoiled daughter of a painter involved with a married lawyer who enjoyed nude sunbathing while in the latter she was a scientist teamed with Keanu Reeves in an effort to save the world. Weisz (complete with a flawless American accent) offered an incisive cameo as a bohemian Jewish girl who entrances Ben Affleck in "Going All the Way" (1997). She had her first real leading role and earned particular critical praise as a servant who becomes involved with a shipwrecked sailor in Beeban Kidron's period drama "Swept From the Sea" (also 1997).
After a return to the stage in which she undertook the role of mentally unstable Catherine in Tennessee Williams' "Suddenly, Last Summer", Weisz starred as a clumsy librarian opposite Brendan Fraser's adventurer in "The Mummy" (1999). Her next two high profile roles cast her opposite the Fiennes brothers in separated movies. With Ralph Fiennes, she played an adulterous wife involved with her dashing brother-in-law in the epic "Sunshine" (1999) while with Joseph Fiennes, she essayed a German-speaking Russian soldier fighting to save Stalingrad in the WWII drama "Enemy at the Gates" (2001). Weisz was also seen as an abused woman who joins with another victim of violence to extract revenge in "Beautiful Creatures" and reprised her role as the spunky book lover in "The Mummy Returns" (both 2001).
After taking a small, warm turn as a single mom and potential love interest for immature cad Hugh Grant in the delightful "About a Boy" (2002), Weisz turned femme fatale for the neo noir con game flick "Confidence" (2003), delivering a seductive performance as the dangerous dame in the middle. She reunited with her "Confidence" co-star Dustin Hoffman—along with John Cusack and Gene Hackman—to star in "Runaway Jury" (2003), a big-screen adaptation of author John Grisham's legal potboiler, playing a mysterious woman entrenched in a deadly effort to influence a verdict. The actress then was seriously miscast as Ben Stiller's wife in the disastrously unfunny comedy "Envy" (2004), a film that failed to utilize either her acting talents or her beauty. Again flawlessly adopting an American accent, Weisz returned to horror-adventure with the comic-book-derived "Constantine" (2005), playing a policewoman drawn into the horrific world of occult investigator John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) after the mysterious death of her twin sister.
She at last found a role equal to her considerable abilities in "The Constant Gardener" (2005), director Fernando Meirelles' gripping adaptation of the John LeCarre novel in which Weisz played Tessa Quayle, the charming but politically outspoken wife of a complacent British diplomat in Africa (Ralph Fiennes) whose murder sends him on a journey to unravel the dark, twisting secrets that led to her demise. Though the character death opens the film, Weisz appears throughout in extended flashbacks and delivers a startlingly three-dimensional and compelling performance that allows the audience to see Tessa from all the same angles as her husband and become fully invested in the mysteries surrounding her slaying. Thanks in large part to Fiennes' perfectly measured portrayal of a man who is forced to completely transform his character through the course of the film, LeCarre's meticulously plotted potboiler was elevated into an engrossing, moving and poetic view of unfolding human dramas against the colorful, chaotic African backdrop. For her part, Weisz earned a Golden Globe award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role. A very pregnant Weisz then cruised to an easy victory at the 78th Academy Awards, winning the Oscar for Best Performance for Actress in a Supporting Role.
- Born: on 03/07/1971 in London, England
- Job Titles: Actor
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