Weisz, Rachel (1971– )

English actor. She acted on British stage and television before appearing in her first major film, Bernardo Bertolucci's drama Stealing Beauty (1996). She attracted international attention with her role as the murdered activist in the thriller The Constant Gardner (2005), an adaptation of a John le Carré novel, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (2006).

Weisz was born in London to Jewish Holocaust survivors; her father was a Hungarian inventor of medical equipment, her mother an Austrian psychoanalyst. She started modelling at 13 and began acting while at Cambridge University, where she formed the Cambridge Talking Tongues theatre troupe, which went on to receive the Guardian Student Drama Award at the Edinburgh Festival. Her role in a revival of Noel Coward's Design for Living (1993) earned her an award for Most Promising Newcomer from the London Critics' Circle in 1994.

Weisz has appeared in other adaptations of popular novels, including Nick Hornby's About a Boy (2002) and John Grisham's Runaway Jury (2003), as well as the Hellblazer comic-book adaptation Constantine (2005). Other films include the thriller remake The Mummy (1999), the World War II film Enemy at the Gates (2001), and the romantic drama My Blueberry Nights (2007).