Rachel Weisz

b. March 7, 1970

by JWA Staff
Our work to expand the Encyclopedia is ongoing. We are providing this brief biography for Rachel Weisz until we are able to commission a full entry.

Photo of Rachel Weisz, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Rachel Weisz’s film career has spanned films from action movies like The Mummy to more nuanced roles in The Constant Gardner and Denial. Weisz began a modeling career at age fourteen and earned a BA in English from Trinity Hall at Cambridge University, where she co-founded the student acting troupe Cambridge Talking Tongues. She had early roles in BBC dramas including Inspector Morse and in the movies Death Machine, Chain Reaction, and Stealing Beauty before her breakout role in the 1999 B-movie send-up The Mummy. She also played leading roles in 2001’s Enemy at the Gates and 2002’s About a Boy. She earned an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actor’s Guild Award for her role in The Constant Gardener in 2005. She has won two BAFTAs, in 2006 and 2019, for British Artist of the Year and Best Actress in a Supporting Role, respectively. Her 2019 win was for her portrayal of Sarah Churchill in The Favourite, which also earned her an Academy Award nomination. She has continued to pursue a wide range of roles, performing in The Fountain in 2006, The Bourne Legacy in 2012, The Light Between Oceans in 2016, and Black Widow in 2021, among many others. In 2016 she played historian Deborah Lipstadt in the biopic Denial. As of 2023 she is set to star in a film adaptation of Séance on a Wet Afternoon, directed by Tomas Alfredson. 

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How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Rachel Weisz." (Viewed on April 19, 2024) <http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/weisz-rachel>.