Jennifer Jason Leigh is an American actress, singer, screenwriter and producer.
Background
Leigh, Jennifer Jason was born on February 5, 1962 in Los Angeles, California, United States. She is the daughter of actor Vic Morrow (1932-82), from Blackboard Jungle (55, Richard Brooks) and Men in War (57, Anthony Mann), and of actress-writer Barbara Turner, who acted in Robert Altmans Night mare in Chicago (64) and wrote Petulia (68, Richard Lester) for Altman. Patrick McCilligan’s biography of Altman, Jumping Off the Cliff, suggests that the relationship between Altman and Turner hastened the end of her marriage to Morrow. And then, nearly thirty years later, Leigh appears, brilliant (if a little too close to an audition set piece), as the dour phone- sex provider in Short Cuts (93, Altman).
Education
Educated at Lee Strasberg Institute.
Career
It’s natural to think that Leigh’s grim pout comes from Vic Morrow, one of the most steadily blocked Method actors. But to judge from photographs, she resembles her mother, too. Hers has been a tough career, working in many poor films, sometimes close to exploitation. As if from necessity, she has a long-suffering, wistful air that comes close to depravity or saintliness. She was a blindmute in Eyes of a Stranger (81, Ken Wiederhorn); catching the eye in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (82, Amy Heckerling); Wrong Is Right (82, Richard Brooks); Easy Money (83, James Signorelli); Grandview. U.S.A. (84, Randal Kleiser); Flesh + Blood (85, Paul Verhoeven); The Hitcher (86, Robert Harmon); a dead-eyed call girl in The Men’s Club (86, Peter Medak); Sister, Sister (87, Bill Condon); Under Cover (87, John Stoekwell); and Heart of Midnight (88, Matthew Chapman).
She was very funny in The Big Picture (89, Christopher Guest); wan, working-class, and endlessly raped as Tralala in Last Exit to Brooklyn (89, Uli Edel); authentically dumb in Miami Blues (90, George Armitage); credibly a junkie in Rush (91. Lili Fini Zanuck); beguiling and creepy in Single White Female (92, Barbet Schroeder) in which her very quietness was sinister; tense, mannered, and even amateurish in The Hudsucker Proxy (94, Joel Coen); and Dorothy in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (94, Alan Rudolph).
As she approached forty, it was plain that she was too frowningly independent to notice that hurdle. She may not be ingratiating; she may come off stranger than some films require, but she is full of damaged history and shy ideas: Dolores Claiborne (95, Taylor Hackford); Georgia (95, Uln Grosbard), written bv her mother; Bastard out of Carolina (96, Anjelica Huston); Washington Square (97, Agniezska Holland); A Thousand Acres (97, Jocelyn Moorhouse); eXistenZ (99, David Cronenberg). Then, in 2001, with actor Alan Gumming, she codirectcd a very nice, sour inside-Hollywood picture, The Anniversary Party, a further, welcome sign of Altman’s touch.