Rachel Weisz

Rachel Hannah Weisz is a British actress known for her work in both independent films and major Hollywood blockbusters. Across her career, she has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Laurence Olivier Award.

Weisz was born on 7 March 1970 in Westminster, London, and grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Her parents came to the United Kingdom as children in 1938 to escape the Nazis; her father was a Hungarian Jewish mechanical engineer and inventor, while her mother was an Austrian teacher and psychotherapist who converted to Judaism. Weisz completed her A-levels at St Paul's Girls School before studying English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. While at Cambridge, she co-founded the all-female student drama group Cambridge Talking Tongues, which won a Guardian Student Drama Award at the 1991 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She subsequently trained under master clown Philippe Gaulier.

Weisz began acting in television and stage productions in the early 1990s, making her film debut in Death Machine in 1994. Her early theatrical breakthrough came with her role in a 1994 revival of Noël Coward's play Design for Living, which earned her a London Critics' Circle Award for most promising newcomer. After appearing in various film and television roles, including Stealing Beauty, she achieved international film success playing Evelyn Carnahan in the action-adventure blockbuster The Mummy in 1999, later reprising her role in the 2001 sequel The Mummy Returns.

Throughout the 2000s, Weisz starred in a wide range of feature films, including Enemy at the Gates, About a Boy, Runaway Jury, Constantine, The Fountain, and Agora. Her performance as an activist in the 2005 thriller The Constant Gardener earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the Golden Globe Award, and the Screen Actors Guild Award. On stage, she earned the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in a 2009 London revival of A Streetcar Named Desire.

In the 2010s, Weisz balanced mainstream studio features such as The Bourne Legacy and Oz the Great and Powerful with critically praised independent films, including The Deep Blue Sea, The Lobster, and Denial. Through her production company, LC6 Productions, she released the 2017 feature film Disobedience, which she both produced and starred in. For her portrayal of Lady Sarah Churchill in the 2018 historical film The Favourite, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and received a second Academy Award nomination.

Weisz's projects in the 2020s include portraying Melina Vostokoff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Black Widow and executive producing and starring as twin obstetricians in the 2023 miniseries Dead Ringers, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination. Outside of acting and producing, she has served in high-profile advertising campaigns and brand ambassadorships for entities including Burberry, L'Oréal, and Bulgari.