Rachel Weisz Biography
An exotic-looking brunette with alabaster skin, a heart-shaped face, pouty lips and expressive dark eyes, Rachel Weisz caught the attention of her fellow Brits when she co-starred with Ewan McGregor in the BBC miniseries "Scarlet and Black" (1993). The following year, Weisz earned praise for her performance alongside Rupert Everett in the London stage revival of "Design for Living". In 1996, she made the move to the big screen in two very different films: in Bernardo Bertolucci's "Stealing Beauty", and in Andrew Davis' "Chain Reaction". In the former, she was the spoiled daughter of a painter involved with a married lawyer who enjoyed nude sunbathing while in the latter she was a scientist teamed with Keanu Reeves in an effort to save the world. Weisz (complete with a flawless American accent) offered an incisive cameo as a bohemian Jewish girl who entrances Ben Affleck in "Going All the Way" (1997). She had her first real leading role and earned particular critical praise as a servant who becomes involved with a shipwrecked sailor in Beeban Kidron's period drama "Swept From the Sea" (also 1997).
After a return to the stage in which she undertook the role of mentally unstable Catherine in Tennessee Williams' "Suddenly, Last Summer", Weisz starred as a clumsy librarian opposite Brendan Fraser's adventurer in "The Mummy" (1999). Her next two high profile roles cast her opposite the Fiennes brothers in separated movies. With Ralph Fiennes, she played an adulterous wife involved with her dashing brother-in-law in the epic "Sunshine" (1999) while with Joseph Fiennes, she essayed a German-speaking Russian soldier fighting to save Stalingrad in the WWII drama "Enemy at the Gates" (2001). Weisz was also seen as an abused woman who joins with another victim of violence to extract revenge in "Beautiful Creatures" and reprised her role as the spunky book lover in "The Mummy Returns" (both 2001).