Jennifer Jason Leigh Biography
Born: February 05, 1962
A professional actor since the age of nine, Jennifer Jason Leigh earned her Screen Actors Guild card at 16 and dropped out of high school to study at the Lee Strasberg Institute and star in seedy made-for-TV movies. Born to actor Vic_Morrow and writer/actress Barbara_Turner in Hollywood, CA, Jennifer picked up the middle name Jason from family friend Jason_Robards_Jr. Throughout her career, she has made a name for herself portraying helpless, damaged, or mentally unsound characters, often performing at a higher level than the material. Also known for extensively researching her roles, Leigh dropped down to less than 90 pounds for one of her first features as an anorexic teenager in the TV-movie The Best Little Girl in the World. Never one to shy away from touchy subject matter, her breakthrough role came in 1982 as the naïve high school girl who gets an abortion in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. After a decade of developing a repertoire of various troubled characters, she was nominated for two Critics Circle awards in 1990 for playing prostitutes in both Miami_Blues and Last Exit to Brooklyn. She would continue to play vulnerable characters in dangerous situations as the rookie narcotics officer-turned-drug addict in Rush. This was followed by her notorious role as the psycho roommate Hedra who tries to steal the identity of her roommate (Bridget_Fonda) in Single_White_Female. She played a phone sex worker in the ensemble film Short_Cuts, her first of three projects involving director Robert_Altman. Leigh occasionally stepped out of her down-and-out roles, and in 1994 she shined as Amy Archer in The_Hudsucker_Proxy. Her comic turn as a plucky undercover journalist was said to recall the work of legendary actresses like Katharine_Hepburn and Barbara_Stanwyck. She delivered critically acclaimed performances in her next two films, with a Golden Globe nomination for Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle and an Independent Spirit nomination for Georgia. After playing an angry daughter in Dolores_Claiborne, a spitfire kidnapper in Kansas_City, and a domestic violence survivor in Bastard out of Carolina, she took another dramatic turn toward a period film. In Agnieszka_Holland's Washington_Square, Leigh proved her range by portraying a shy, clumsy girl as she evolves into adulthood. She returned to more showy roles for two films dealing with Shakespeare's +King Lear: A_Thousand_Acres with Jason_Robards_Jr. and the fourth Dogme 95 film, The_King_Is_Alive. Not limiting herself to dramas, Leigh appeared as an isolated computer programmer in David_Cronenberg's thriller eXistenZ and as an over-the-top mom in the comedy Skipped_Parts. Around that time, she also appeared on-stage in Broadway and off-Broadway plays, most notably as dancer Sally Bowles in +Cabaret. Testing out new ground in 2001, she and fellow +Cabaret star Alan_Cumming wrote, directed, and starred in the ensemble comedy The_Anniversary_Party, a digital video project inspired by Dogme 95. Continuing to evolve as a respected actress, she went on to work in the crime genre, first as a hitman's wife in Road to Perdition, and then in Jane_Campion's thriller In the Cut. Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
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