Patricia Arquette

Patricia Arquette is an American actor whose career has moved between independent cinema, studio films, television, and advocacy. Born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 8, 1968, she is part of the Arquette acting family: her father, Lewis Arquette, was an actor, and her siblings include Rosanna, David, Alexis, and Richmond Arquette. She first attracted attention as Kristen Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), where Kristen returns to confront Freddy Krueger alongside hospitalized teenagers.

Her film work includes True Romance (1993), written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott; in it she plays Alabama Whitman, who marries Christian Slater’s Clarence and becomes entangled in a violent flight involving stolen cocaine. She later starred in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994) as Kathy O’Hara, and played a prostitute, Jesse Bering, in John Boorman’s The General (1998). In David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), she has the dual roles of Renee Madison and Alice Wakefield.

Arquette received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Olivia Evans in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014). The film was made over twelve years, following Mason from childhood to adulthood, and Arquette’s character is the divorced mother raising Mason and his sister Samantha. Her performance also won the Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Critics Choice awards for supporting actress.

From 2005 to 2011, she led the CBS drama Medium as Allison DuBois, a Phoenix wife and mother who assists law enforcement through visions and dreams. The series drew on real-life Allison DuBois, who said she was a medium. Arquette won the 2005 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for the role. In 2018, she portrayed Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell in the Showtime miniseries Escape at Dannemora. Based on the 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility escape, the drama depicts Mitchell’s relationships with inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat before their breakout. Her performance earned a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

In Apple TV+’s Severance, Arquette plays Harmony Cobel, the manager of Lumon Industries’ severed-floor employees, whose workplace identities are surgically separated from their personal memories. She was nominated for Primetime Emmy awards for the role.

Beyond acting, Arquette has publicly campaigned for equal pay and for improving conditions for women and girls. In her 2015 Oscar acceptance speech, she called for wage equality and equal rights for women in the United States. She founded GiveLove, a nonprofit supporting sanitation projects.