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Jennifer Jason Leigh (born February 5, 1962) is a Golden Globe-nominated and two-time NYFCC Award-winning American actress.

Her work has drawn high critical praise. Salon has praised her as "one of America's best actors". Paul Verhoeven, who directed her in Flesh & Blood, similarly claimed, "There is no greater actress working in America", and in 1994, Vogue claimed, "Leigh sets a standard that all future film actresses must attempt to match … (She has) an extraordinary range and power. The proof is in her diverse, courageous and mesmerizing body of work." She has already received three separate career tributes – at the Telluride Film Festival in 1993, a special award for her contribution to independent cinema from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2002, and a week-long retrospective showing of her film work held by the American Cinematheque at Los Angeles’ Egyptian Theatre in June 2001. In addition to these achievements, Leigh was selected as one of "America's 10 Most Beautiful Women" by Harper's Bazaar in 1989.

Early life and career

Jennifer Jason Leigh was born Jennifer L. Morrow in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Combat! actor Vic Morrow and Pollock screenwriter Barbara Turner.¹ Both of Leigh's parents were Jewish, although Leigh was raised mostly without religion.² Leigh changed her last name, taking the middle name "Jason" in honor of a family friend, Academy Award-winning actor Jason Robards.

At the age of 14, she attended Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in Loch Sheldrake, New York and summer acting workshops given by Lee Strasberg. She received her Screen Actors Guild membership in an episode of the TV show Baretta when she was 16.

Career

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An episode of The Waltons and several TV movies followed, including an unusually powerful portrayal of an anorexic teenager in The Best Little Girl in the World, for which Leigh dropped to 86 pounds (39 kg) under medical supervision. She made her screen debut as a blind, deaf, and mute rape victim in the 1980 slasher film Eyes of a Stranger, which she dropped out of high school to play.^{citation needed} In 1982, she played a teenager who gets pregnant in Cameron Crowe's popular high-school comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which was directed by Amy Heckerling and served as a launching pad for several then-unknown future stars besides Leigh, including Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, Anthony Edwards, Phoebe Cates and Nicolas Cage.

Leigh gravitated towards portraying fragile, damaged or neurotic characters. She was initially cast as victims – a virginal princess kidnapped and almost raped by mercenaries in Flesh & Blood (1985), an innocent waitress pursued by The Hitcher (1986), and a young woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the seedy nightclub inherited from her uncle in Heart of Midnight (1989).

It wasn't until 1990 that Leigh made a significant career breakthrough when she was voted the year's Best Supporting Actress by both the New York Film Critics Circle and the Boston Society of Film Critics for her portrayals of two very different prostitutes: first as the tough, emotionally numb sex worker Tralala in Last Exit to Brooklyn, and then as the sweet waif whose dreams of suburban bliss are shattered by sociopathic ex-con Alec Baldwin in Miami Blues. She then portrayed an undercover narcotics policewoman who becomes a junkie in the line of duty in Rush (1991), and one of her signature roles: Hedy, the psychotic “roommate from hell” in the thriller Single White Female (1992). She then played a fast-talking, hard-as-nails reporter who has her heart melted by Tim Robbins in the Coen Brothers’ surreal comic fantasy The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), and won many awards for her eccentrically mannered portrayal of the writer and poetess Dorothy Parker in Alan Rudolph's Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994). Some criticized Leigh's decision to deliver dialogue in a slurring, lock-jawed mumble, but her speech was an accurate impersonation of Dorothy Parker; she received a Golden Globe nomination and Best Actress awards from the National Society of Film Critics, Chicago Film Critics Association and Fort Lauderdale Film Critics.

Next up was the role of Sadie Flood, an angry, drug-addicted barroom rock singer living in the shadow of her successful older sister (played by Mare Winningham) in Georgia (1995). For the role Leigh dropped to 90 pounds (41 kg) and sang all the songs live, including a painful 8½-minute version of Van Morrison's "Take Me Back". Critic Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that "(Leigh's) fierce, funny, exasperating and deeply affecting portrayal commands attention"; James Berardinelli claimed, "There are times when it's uncomfortable to watch this performance because it's so powerful", while Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said "Leigh’s exceptional performance tears you apart… we've never seen anything like it before." She won Best Actress awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and Montreal World Film Festival.

Other memorable Leigh roles of this era included a jaded phone sex operator who diapers her newborn baby while plying her trade in Robert Altman's Academy Award-nominated film Short Cuts (1993), Kathy Bates's tormented, pill-popping daughter in the Stephen King adaptation Dolores Claiborne (1995), a streetwise kidnapper in Altman's jazz tribute Kansas City (1996), a mousy 19th century spinster heiress courted by a gold digger in Washington Square (1997), and a virtual-reality game designer hunted by terrorists in David Cronenberg's surreal eXistenZ (1999). In 2001 she joined forces with Scottish actor Alan Cumming to write, direct and produce a film shot in 19 days on digital video and starring real-life Hollywood friends like Kevin Kline, Phoebe Cates, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Beals, John C. Reilly, and Parker Posey. The result was The Anniversary Party, a well-received ensemble comedy in the style of The Big Chill or Peter's Friends. Leigh and Cumming jointly received a citation for Excellence in Filmmaking from the National Board of Review and were nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay.

More recently Leigh has been cast in smaller character roles: as gangster Tom Hanks's doomed wife in Sam Mendes's Road to Perdition (2002), as Meg Ryan's brutally murdered sister in Jane Campion's In the Cut (2003), and as Christian Bale's sympathetic girlfriend (and again a prostitute) in the dark thriller The Machinist (2004) (causing Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle to comment that "As the downtrodden, sexy, trusting and quietly funny prostitute, Leigh is, of course, in her element"). Her performance as a manipulative stage mother in Childstar won her a Genie Award in 2005.

Also a stage actress, Leigh took on the singing, dancing lead role of Sally Bowles in the popular musical Cabaret on Broadway from August 4, 1998 to February 28, 1999, and succeeded Mary-Louise Parker in the lead role in Proof from September 13, 2001 to June 30, 2002. Other theatrical appearances include The Glass Menagerie, Man of Destiny, The Shadow Box, Picnic, Sunshine, and Abigail's Party.

Other work

Leigh's least favorite role was as a normal girlfriend in the popular 1991 firefighting drama Backdraft; Hollywood legend has it that Leigh told director Ron Howard, "The only role I want to play in this film is the fire."^{citation needed}

She filmed a role for Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999), but when Kubrick wanted to do re-shoots, she was unavailable and her entire part was redone with actress Vinessa Shaw. In 1997, she was featured in Faith No More's music video for "Last Cup of Sorrow".

She turned down roles for movies such as The Accused (1988), Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), Pretty Woman (1990), Singles (1992), A League of Their Own (1992), The Stendhal Syndrome (1996), L.A. Confidential (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), The Brown Bunny (2003), and narrowly missed out on Jodie Foster's breakthrough role in Taxi Driver (1976), Brooke Shields' role in The Blue Lagoon (1980), Kathleen Turner's landmark role in Romancing the Stone (1984), Elizabeth McGovern's role in Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Linda Hamilton's role in The Terminator (1984), Anjelica Huston's role in Prizzi's Honor (1985), Mia Farrow's role in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Kelly McGillis' role in Top Gun (1986), Diane Keaton's role in Baby Boom (1987), Melanie Griffith's role in Working Girl (1988), Goldie Hawn's role in Death Becomes Her (1992) and the Clarice Starling role in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Hannibal (2001).^{citation needed} She was one of several actresses considered by Jane Campion for the Holly Hunter role in The Piano (1993), but she was unable to meet with her because she was shooting Rush at the time. She auditioned for the Catwoman role in Batman Returns (1992), which went to Michelle Pfeiffer. She also turned down the role of Libby, which was eventually played by Cynthia Watros, on ABC's popular thriller series Lost.³ She appeared in the 2008 film Synecdoche, New York with Catherine Keener and Philip Seymour Hoffman.⁴

Leigh is known for doing extensive method acting research in every role, including keeping diaries written in the character’s voice, and in the past has interviewed psychiatrists, mental patients, drug addicts, sexual abuse survivors, prostitutes and phone sex workers to prepare for her roles.⁵ Leigh was willing to perform oral sex with Vincent Gallo in the 2004 film The Brown Bunny, but said "it just didn't work out".⁶ Eventually, Chloë Sevigny got the role.

Personal life

When Leigh was twenty years old, her father was accidentally killed when a helicopter stunt went wrong while shooting Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). Leigh and her sister filed suit against Warner Brothers, John Landis, and Steven Spielberg. They settled out of court a year later, but the terms of the settlement have never been made public. At the time of her father's death, Leigh said she had not seen her father in three years or talked to him in two, having been estranged from him after her parents' divorce.

Leigh and her boyfriend of four years, Academy Award-nominated independent film writer-director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale), were married on September 3, 2005.⁷ Baumbach directed Margot at the Wedding which starred Leigh opposite Nicole Kidman and Jack Black. The couple reside in New York City and Los Angeles.

She has been best friends with her Fast Times at Ridgemont High and The Anniversary Party co-star Phoebe Cates for over 25 years. Other close friends include Mare Winningham, Jennifer Beals, Alan Cumming, and John C. Reilly. Her stepfather is television director Reza Badiyi.⁸

According to various magazine interviews and her 1999 guest slot on the TV show Inside the Actors Studio, Leigh is a fan of the photographer Nan Goldin, and the musicians Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Liz Phair, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Filmography

References

Further reading

• Dunn, Jancee (1995-11-30). "Jennifer Jason Leigh - She's the Queen of the Ravaged, Boozed Up, and Strung Out". Rolling Stone: pp. 57. 

External links

• Jennifer Jason Leigh at the Internet Movie Database
• In-depth interview at Museum of Moving Image in 1994
• Margot at the Wedding
• The Onion A.V. Club interview