More Jennifer Jason Leigh Bios & Profiles
The most recent Jennifer Jason Leigh biography is published on the main page.
Biography #2 (for Hey Arnold! The Movie)
Jennifer Jason Leigh is an actress, director and producer. Last year, she marked her directional debut with The Anniversary Party, which she co-wrote, co-directed and starred in with Alan Cumming. A critical success, the film received a citation for Excellence in Filmmaking from The National Board of Review, and Leigh was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay. Also in 2001, she won Best Actress at the Tokyo International Film Festival for her role in The King is Alive.In 2002, Leigh stars in Sam Mendes' The Road to Perdition, opposite Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Jude Law. The drama, based on the DC Comics novel of the same name, is set in the depression and revolves around a hit man bent on avenging the murder of his wife and son.
Leigh first came to prominence in 1990, winning both the New York Film Critics Circle and the Boston Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Last Exit to Brooklyn and Miami Blues.
In 1993, she first began working with Robert Altman in Short Cuts as the phone sex worker, and later in Kansas City, as a lovesick misguided woman trying to save her husband's life by kidnapping a politician's wife (Miranda Richardson).
In 1994, Leigh played Dorothy Parker in Alan Rudolph's Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, which Robert Altman also produced. She was named Best Actress by The National Society of Film Critics and The Chicago Film Critics and was nominated for both the Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Best Actress Awards.
In 1995, Leigh produced and starred in Georgia, written by Barbara Turner and directed by Ulu Grosbard. For her role as Sadie, a desperately ambitious third-rate singer, Leigh won the New York Film Critics Circle Best Actress Award and the Montreal Film Festival Award for Best Actress, and she was also nominated for and Independent Spirit Award for Best Actress.
Other films to Leigh's credit include: David Cronenberg's eXistenZ opposite Jude Law, Agnieska Holland's Washington Square, opposite Albert Finney, Joel and Ethan Coen's The Hudsucker Proxy, opposite Tim Robbins, Taylor Hackford's Dolores Clairborne, opposite Kathy Bates, Barbet Schroeder's Single White Female, Lily Zanuck's Rush, opposite Jason Patric, A Thousand Acres, with Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Sister, Sister, Backdraft, Crooked Hearts, Eyes of a Stranger, Wrong is Right, Easy Money, Grandview U.S.A., Flesh and Blood, Men's Club, The Hitcher, Undercover, Heart of Midnight and Christopher Guest's The Big Picture.
Currently, she is staring on Broadway in David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize winning play Proof. Her additional theatre credits include two plays directed by Marshall Mason, William Inge's Picnic at Los Angeles' Ahmanson Theater and Sunshine at New York's Circle Repertory Theater as well as the Broadway production of Cabaret directed by Sam Mendes and co-starring Alan Cumming.
Leigh has been honored with numerous retrospectives including the prestigious American Cinematheque, Telluride Film Festival and the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York. On June 6th 2002, The Film Society of Lincoln Center will present her with the 2002 Young Friends of Film Honors, an annual tribute to an outstanding film artist whose work is especially enjoyed and admired by today's young filmgoers.
Bio courtesy Paramount for "Hey Arnold! The Movie" (01-Jan-2000)
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