Amy Irving

Amy Irving is an American actress and singer born on September 10, 1953, in Palo Alto, California. Her father, Jules Irving, was a film and stage director of Russian-Jewish descent who co-founded the Actor's Workshop in San Francisco, and her mother, Priscilla Pointer, is an actress. Irving has a brother, David Irving, who works as a writer and director, and a sister, Katie Irving, a singer and teacher of deaf children. She was raised in Christian Science, her mother's faith. Irving's first stage appearance came at nine months old, when her father brought her onstage in a production of Rumpelstiltskin, and she continued to appear in her father's productions as a young child.

Irving grew up involved in San Francisco theater before her family relocated to New York City during her teenage years, when her father was appointed director of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater. She made her Broadway debut with a walk-on role in The Country Wife during its 1965–66 run, a production directed by Robert Symonds, the associate director of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater and a family friend who later became her stepfather. Irving subsequently trained at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and also studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in London. She graduated from the Professional Children's School in New York and made her Off-Broadway debut at age 17 in And Chocolate on Her Chin.

Within six months of returning to Los Angeles from London in the mid-1970s, Irving was cast in her feature film debut, Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976), in which she played Sue Snell — her mother, Priscilla Pointer, also appeared in the film. She followed that with a lead role as Gillian Bellaver in De Palma's supernatural thriller The Fury (1978). During this period she also appeared in television projects including guest roles on Police Woman and Happy Days, a lead role in the miniseries Once an Eagle opposite Sam Elliott and Glenn Ford, and a stage performance as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at the Los Angeles Free Shakespeare Theatre in 1975, a role she reprised at the Seattle Repertory Theatre in 1982–83. She auditioned for the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars, which ultimately went to Carrie Fisher.

In 1980, Irving appeared on Broadway in Amadeus at the Broadhurst Theatre for nine months, replacing Jane Seymour due to pregnancy. That same year she co-starred with Richard Dreyfuss in The Competition and appeared in Honeysuckle Rose alongside Willie Nelson, a film that marked her on-screen singing debut; both Irving and co-star Dyan Cannon performed their own singing as country-and-western singer characters. She also co-starred in Micki + Maude in 1984. Irving's role in Barbra Streisand's Yentl (1983) earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 1988, she provided the singing voice for the character Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and starred in the romantic comedy Crossing Delancey, for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination. That same year, her Off-Broadway performance in The Road to Mecca earned her an Obie Award.

Irving's Broadway work continued with the original production of Arthur Miller's Broken Glass (1994) at the Booth Theatre and a revival of Three Sisters (1997) at the Roundabout Theatre, the latter alongside Jeanne Tripplehorn and Lili Taylor. She also appeared on Broadway in Heartbreak House with Rex Harrison at the Circle in the Square Theatre. Her film work in the late 1990s included Woody Allen's ensemble comedy Deconstructing Harry (1997) and a reprisal of her role as Sue Snell in The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999). She co-starred opposite Michael Douglas in Steven Soderbergh's crime drama Traffic (2000) and appeared in the independent films Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001) and Adam (2009). In 2018, she reunited with Soderbergh for the psychological horror film Unsane in a supporting role.

Irving's final Broadway appearance was in the American premiere of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia at Lincoln Center during the 2006–07 season. Her additional Off-Broadway credits include The Heidi Chronicles, The Vagina Monologues in both London and New York, The Glass Menagerie alongside her mother Priscilla Pointer, Celadine at George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and the 2006 one-woman play A Safe Harbor for Elizabeth Bishop. In May 2010, she made her Opera Theatre of Saint Louis debut playing Desiree Armfeldt in Isaac Mizrahi's production of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. In April 2023, Irving released her debut album, Born in a Trunk, comprising ten cover songs drawn from her life and career.

In her personal life, Irving dated director Steven Spielberg from 1976 to 1980, and the couple later reunited and married in 1985; they divorced in 1989. She has a son, Max Samuel, born June 13, 1985, with Spielberg. Irving subsequently became involved with Brazilian film director Bruno Barreto; they married in 1996 and divorced in 2005. In 1994, she and Anthony Hopkins co-hosted the 48th Tony Awards at the Gershwin Theatre in New York.