Patricia Arquette

Patricia Arquette, born April 8, 1968, in Chicago, Illinois, is an American actor whose work spans independent film, studio features, television drama, and limited series. She is a member of the Arquette acting family: her father was actor Lewis Arquette, and her siblings include actors Rosanna Arquette, David Arquette, Alexis Arquette, and Richmond Arquette. Arquette drew major attention playing Alabama Whitman in Tony Scott’s 1993 crime romance *True Romance*. Written by Quentin Tarantino, the film follows Alabama and comic-book clerk Clarence Worley, played by Christian Slater, after they steal cocaine from her former pimp and attempt to sell it. Her performance combined vulnerability, humor, and toughness, particularly in a celebrated scene opposite James Gandolfini. Her film roles have included Kathy O’Hara in Tim Burton’s *Ed Wood* (1994), Renee Madison and Alice Wakefield in David Lynch’s *Lost Highway* (1997), and Mary Casterini in Martin Scorsese’s *Bringing Out the Dead* (1999). In the 2003 adaptation of Louis Sachar’s novel *Holes*, she portrayed outlaw Kissin’ Kate Barlow, whose history is connected to the curse surrounding Camp Green Lake. Arquette won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Olivia Evans in Richard Linklater’s *Boyhood* (2014). The film was shot intermittently over twelve years and follows Mason Evans Jr. from childhood to early adulthood. Arquette’s character, Mason’s mother, changes jobs, enters and leaves difficult marriages, returns to education, and tries to build stability for her children. For the performance, she also received a Golden Globe, BAFTA Award, Critics Choice Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award. During her Oscar acceptance speech, she called attention to wage inequality for women in the United States. On television, Arquette starred as Allison DuBois in NBC and CBS’s *Medium*, which ran from 2005 to 2011. The series was inspired by the real Allison DuBois, who claimed psychic abilities, and centered on a Phoenix-area wife and mother who assists law enforcement through dreams and visions. Arquette won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for the role in 2005. She later played prison employee Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell in the Showtime miniseries *Escape at Dannemora* (2018), based on the 2015 escape of convicted murderers Richard Matt and David Sweat from Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Arquette won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for that performance. In Hulu’s *The Act* (2019), she portrayed Dee Dee Blanchard, earning another Emmy for playing the mother of Gypsy Rose Blanchard. She also plays Harmony Cobel in Apple TV+’s workplace science-fiction series *Severance*.