| Rachel Hannah Weisz (pronounced /ˈvaɪs/ "vyess"; born 7 March 1970) is an English actress and model. She gained wide public recognition after her portrayal of Evelyn "Evy" Carnahan-O'Connell in the films The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. In 2001, she starred opposite Hugh Grant in the hit About a Boy and continued to garner leading roles in Hollywood productions. Her performance in The Constant Gardener (2005) won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, along with other major motion picture awards. Having already worked for television productions, with parts in such major UK television series as Inspector Morse (1993), Weisz started her cinema career in 1995 with Chain Reaction and then appeared in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty. She followed this work with more English films including My Summer with Des, Swept from the Sea, The Land Girls, and Michael Winterbottom's I Want You. Although she received favourable critical recognition for her work to this point, her breakout into wide audience recognition came from a popular serio-comic horror movie The Mummy, in which she played the lead female role alongside Brendan Fraser. She followed this up with two hits, The Mummy Returns (2001), which grossed higher than the original, and About a Boy (2002) with Hugh Grant. Since then, her other film work has included Enemy at the Gates (2001), Runaway Jury (2003) and Constantine (2005). In 2005, Weisz starred in Fernando Meirelles's The Constant Gardener, a film ... |
