Rachel Weisz

 

Rachel Hannah Craig  professionally known as Rachel Weisz (born 7 March 1970), is an Anglo-American film and theatre actress as well as a former fashion model.
Weisz began her acting career at Trinity Hall, Cambridge in the early 1990s, then started working in television, appearing in the detective drama Inspector Morse, the British mini-series Scarlet and Black and the television film Advocates II. She made her film debut in the science fiction film Death Machine (1994). Her breakthrough role came in the action film Chain Reaction  (1996), opposite Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman.
Next, she appeared as Evelyn Carnahan-O'Connell in the adventure films The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001). Other notable films featuring Weisz are the war film Enemy at the Gates (2001), opposite Jude Law; the comedy-drama About a Boy (2002), opposite Hugh Grant; the supernatural action-thriller Constantine (2005), pairing her once again with Keanu Reeves; and in the Darren Aronofsky-directed romantic drama The Fountain, opposite Hugh Jackman. For her supporting role in the drama thriller The Constant Gardener (2005), opposite Ralph Fiennes, she received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors' Guild award. In 2006, Weisz received the BAFTA Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year. She played the Wicked Witch of the East, Evanora, in the fantasy adventure Oz the Great and Powerful (2013).

Early life

Weisz was born in Westminster, London, and grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Her father, George Weisz, was an inventor from Hungary. Her mother, Edith Ruth (née Teich), is a teacher-turned-psychotherapist from Vienna, Austria. Her parents fled to the United Kingdom before the outbreak of the Second World War, to escape the Nazis. Her father is Jewish; her maternal grandfather, Alexander Teich, was also Jewish, and had been a secretary of the World Union of Jewish Students.Her mother's ancestry is Austrian Jewish, "Catholic Viennese" and Italian. Weisz's mother was brought up as a Roman Catholic, and, according to Vogue, later converted to Judaism. Weisz has a younger sister, Minnie, who is a photographer and curator.
Weisz's parents valued the arts and encouraged her and her sister to form opinions of their own by introducing them to family debates. Her parents later divorced. Weisz left North London Collegiate School and attended Benenden School for one year completing A-levels at St Paul's Girls School. Weisz claimed that she was a bad pupil until an English Literature teacher inspired her at the age of 16.
Known for being an "English rose" due to her appearance, Weisz started modelling when she was 14. In 1984, she gained public attention when she turned down an offer to star in King David with Richard Gere.
After leaving school, she entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she graduated with a second-class honours, upper division  Bachelor of Arts degree in English. During her university years, where she was a contemporary of Sacha Baron Cohen, Alexander Armstrong, Sue Perkins, Mel Giedroyc, Richard Osman and Ben Miller (whom she briefly dated), she appeared in various student productions, co-founding a student drama group called Cambridge Talking Tongues. It won a Guardian Student Drama Award at the 1991 Edinburgh Fringe Festival for an improvised piece called Slight Possession, directed by David Farr. The group existed until 1993