Rachel Weisz

Rachel Weisz was born on March 7, 1970, in Westminster, London, to Edith Ruth, a psychotherapist, and George Weisz, an inventor originally from Hungary. She studied English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she co-founded the student drama company Talking Tongues. The group won a Guardian Student Drama Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1991, an early indication of the theatrical training that would shape her career.

Weisz began working professionally on British television, appearing in series including “Inspector Morse” and “Scarlet and Black.” Her film breakthrough came with Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Stealing Beauty” (1996), in which she played Miranda Fox alongside Liv Tyler. International recognition followed through “The Mummy” (1999), Stephen Sommers’s adventure film, where she portrayed Egyptologist Evelyn Carnahan opposite Brendan Fraser. She returned to the role in “The Mummy Returns” (2001), which expanded the character’s action responsibilities and became a major commercial success.

In 2005, Weisz won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Fernando Meirelles’s “The Constant Gardener.” As Tessa Quayle, an activist investigating pharmaceutical misconduct in Kenya, she combined moral urgency with emotional vulnerability. The performance also earned her a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Her other notable films include “The Deep Blue Sea” (2011), an adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s play directed by Terence Davies, and “The Lobster” (2015), Yorgos Lanthimos’s unsettling dystopian satire, in which she starred with Colin Farrell.

In “Disobedience” (2017), Weisz played Ronit Krushka, a photographer returning to her Orthodox Jewish community in London. She also appeared in “The Favourite” (2018) as Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, opposite Olivia Colman and Emma Stone. The film received ten Academy Award nominations, including one for Weisz’s supporting performance.

Her stage work has remained important. She won a Laurence Olivier Award for her performance as Blanche DuBois in a 2009 London revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” In 2021, she starred as twins Elliot and Beverly Mantle in the Amazon series “Dead Ringers,” a gender-reversed television adaptation of David Cronenberg’s 1988 film.

Weisz married actor Daniel Craig in 2011. They have one daughter, while Weisz also has a son from her previous relationship with director Darren Aronofsky. Across independent dramas, large-scale genre films, theater, and television, her career is distinguished by performances that pair intelligence with emotional complexity, particularly in characters confronting institutions, desire, or divided loyalties.