Jennifer Jason Leigh
Jennifer Jason Leigh is an American actress. She began her career on television during the 1970s before making her film breakthrough in the teen film Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She received critical praise for her performances in Last Exit to Brooklyn, Miami Blues, Backdraft, Single White Female, and The Hudsucker Proxy, and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her portrayal of Dorothy Parker in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle.
For her role as fugitive Daisy Domergue in The Hateful Eight, she was nominated for the Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Leigh starred in a 1995 film written by her mother, screenwriter Barbara Turner, entitled Georgia. She co-wrote and co-directed a film with Alan Cumming titled The Anniversary Party. Leigh starred in the crime drama Road to Perdition and the family drama Margot at the Wedding. She had a recurring role on the Showtime comedy-drama series Weeds and received critical acclaim for her voice work in Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa. From 2017 to 2021, she starred in the Netflix comedy-drama series Atypical, while featuring in the science fiction films Annihilation and Possessor. She has since starred in the fifth season of the crime drama series Fargo.
For her stage work, Leigh was nominated for a Drama Desk award for her off-Broadway performance as Beverly Moss in Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party. Her Broadway debut occurred in 1998, when she became the replacement for the role of Sally Bowles in the musical Cabaret.
Early life
Leigh was born February 5, 1962, in Los Angeles, California. Her father, Vic Morrow, was an actor, and her mother, Barbara Turner, was a screenwriter. Her parents divorced when she was two. Leigh's birth name was Jennifer Leigh Morrow. She changed her surname early in her acting career, taking the middle name "Jason" in honor of actor Jason Robards, a family friend. Leigh's parents were Jewish; her father's family was from Russia and her mother's family was from Austria.Leigh is the younger of two daughters. Her older sister, Carrie Ann Morrow, who was credited as a "technical advisor" on her 1995 film Georgia, died in 2016. Leigh also has a half-sister, actress Mina Badie. Badie acted alongside Leigh in The Anniversary Party. Film director Reza Badiyi became Leigh's stepfather when he married Leigh's mother, Barbara.
Career
1976–1989
Leigh had a nonspeaking role in her film debut Death of a Stranger . At the age of 14, she attended acting workshops, taught by Lee Strasberg, and the Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in Loch Sheldrake, New York. Afterwards, she landed a role in the film The Young Runaways. She also appeared in an episode of Baretta and an episode of The Waltons. Several television films followed, including a portrayal of an anorexic teenager in The Best Little Girl in the World, for which Leigh dropped to. She made her film debut, as a blind, deaf and mute rape victim in the 1981 slasher film Eyes of a Stranger. She left school to star in the film.In 1982, Leigh played the role of Stacy Hamilton in Amy Heckerling's high school film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which served as a launching pad for several of its young stars. While decrying the writing as sexist and exploitative, film critic Roger Ebert was enthusiastic about the acting, singling out Leigh and writing, "Don't they know they have a star on their hands?" With the exception of Ridgemont High and a supporting role in the comedy film Easy Money alongside Rodney Dangerfield, Leigh's early film work consisted of playing fragile, damaged or neurotic characters in low-budget horror or thriller films. She played a virginal princess kidnapped and raped by mercenaries in Flesh and Blood, an innocent waitress pursued by the psychopathic title character in The Hitcher , a mentally disturbed, child-like young woman on the threshold of sexual awakening in the Southern Gothic film Sister, Sister, and a young woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown in Heart of Midnight.
She was selected as one of "America's 10 Most Beautiful Women" by Harper's Bazaar in 1989.
1990s
In 1990, Leigh made a significant career breakthrough when she was awarded New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayals of two very different prostitutes: the tough streetwalker Tralala who is brutally gang-raped in Last Exit to Brooklyn, and Susie, a 23-year-old prostitute who falls in love with ex-con Alec Baldwin in Miami Blues. Roger Ebert included Last Exit in his list of Best Movies of 1990, calling Leigh's performance brave, though his review of Miami Blues was much less sympathetic, simultaneously criticizing Leigh's ability to play dumb roles and praising her ability to play smart roles. Entertainment Weekly called her "the Meryl Streep of bimbos".In his 1991 book Cult Movie Stars, Danny Peary described Leigh as "an interesting, always watchable, and extremely talented young actress," summarizing her appeal "For those who believe that the preacher's angelic-looking daughter is as interested in sex as the farmer's daughter. This pretty, sweet-looking blonde has played a number of shy and innocent-looking women who are curious about sex; once they learn, they display wicked imaginations." Peary added, "Leigh seems too gentle and looks too young and innocent to play the parts she has taken. Her females are either hungry for sex and/or have been psychologically affected by past sexual incidents... Her characters are vulnerable and almost always victimised, but usually they gave surprising resilience, and try to use their bad experiences to make themselves stronger."
Leigh was cast in her first mainstream Hollywood studio film, the firefighter drama Backdraft, in which she played a more conventional role, the girlfriend of lead actor William Baldwin. She found more success in the gritty crime drama Rush, portraying an undercover cop who becomes a junkie and falls in love with her partner, played by Jason Patric. Reviewing Rush, Roger Ebert noted, "Leigh of course is a veteran by now of grubby characters in sleazy films; she has become one of the best young actresses by accepting roles some of her contemporaries would not even consider... After her extraordinary work as a doomed prostitute in Last Exit to Brooklyn, here she is again, looking sweet and wholesome, and descending into a world of people who have forgotten their better natures." Leigh's next film, Single White Female, was a surprise box-office success, bringing Leigh to her largest mainstream audience yet, portraying a mentally ill woman who terrorizes roommate Bridget Fonda.
Leigh was awarded the MTV Movie Award for Best Villain at the 1993 MTV Movie Awards and nominated for Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress. Leigh co-starred with Kathy Bates as a tormented, pill-popping woman hiding a history of childhood sexual abuse in the adaptation of Stephen King's novel Dolores Claiborne. Leigh achieved her greatest acclaim in the role of Sadie Flood, an angry, drug-addicted rock singer living in the shadow of her successful older sister, in Georgia. For the role, Leigh dropped to and sang all of her songs live, including a rambling -minute version of Van Morrison's "Take Me Back". Georgia was met with critical praise. James Berardinelli wrote, "There are times when it's uncomfortable to watch this performance because it's so powerful", and Janet Maslin of The New York Times described Leigh's "fierce, risk-taking performance and flashes of overwhelming honesty".
Leigh won New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress and Best Actress from the Montreal World Film Festival, as well as an Independent Spirit Award nomination and Sensual Knife fight nomination Some expressed surprise that she was not nominated for an Academy Award, while Winningham was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Throughout the 1990s, Leigh worked with many independent film directors. She worked with Robert Altman in Short Cuts, playing a phone-sex operator, and Kansas City, as a streetwise kidnapper. Leigh has expressed admiration for Altman and called him her mentor. In a change of pace from her "bad girl" roles, Leigh played the fast-talking reporter Amy Archer in the Coen Brothers' comic homage to 1950s comedy, The Hudsucker Proxy. Leigh took her first lead role as the writer and critic Dorothy Parker in Alan Rudolph's film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. She received a Golden Globe Award nomination and a National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress, as well as Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress and Fort Lauderdale Film Critics Best Actress Award.
In another change of pace, she starred in Agnieszka Holland's version of the Henry James novel Washington Square, as a mousy 19th-century heiress courted by a gold digger. In 1997, she was featured in Faith No More's music video for "Last Cup of Sorrow". In 1998, she appeared alongside Campbell Scott in the Hallmark Hall of Fame television film The Love Letter. In David Cronenberg's eXistenZ, she played a virtual-reality game designer who becomes lost in her own creation. Leigh filmed a role in Stanley Kubrick's final film Eyes Wide Shut as a grieving patient of Dr. Bill Harford who declares her love for him after her father's death. Kubrick wanted to reshoot the scenes, but Leigh was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts with eXistenZ; instead, her scenes were cut, and the role was recast with Marie Richardson.