Jennifer Jason Leigh

Jennifer Jason Leigh, born Jennifer Leigh Morrow on February 5, 1962, in Los Angeles, California, is an American actress whose career spans television, film, and stage. Her father, Vic Morrow, born Victor Morozoff, was an actor, and her mother, Barbara Turner, worked as a screenwriter. Her parents divorced when she was two years old. Early in her career, she changed her surname, adopting the middle name Jason as a tribute to actor Jason Robards, a family friend. Leigh has an older sister, Carrie Ann Morrow, who died in 2016, and a half-sister, actress Mina Badie, whose stepfather, film director Reza Badiyi, married Leigh's mother. Leigh's parents were Jewish, with her father's family originating from Russia and her mother's from Austria.

Leigh's earliest screen appearance was a nonspeaking role in Death of a Stranger in 1973. At fourteen, she attended acting workshops taught by Lee Strasberg and trained at the Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in Loch Sheldrake, New York. She subsequently appeared in the film The Young Runaways in 1978, as well as episodes of Baretta and The Waltons. A television film role as an anorexic teenager in The Best Little Girl in the World required her to drop to 86 pounds. She left school to appear in the 1981 slasher film Eyes of a Stranger, playing a blind, deaf, and mute rape victim.

Her film breakthrough came in 1982 with Amy Heckerling's Fast Times at Ridgemont High, in which she played Stacy Hamilton. Film critic Roger Ebert singled her out in his review, writing that the filmmakers had a star on their hands. Much of her subsequent early work cast her in fragile or damaged characters across low-budget horror and thriller films, including Flesh and Blood and The Hitcher, both in 1985 and 1986 respectively, each co-starring Rutger Hauer. In 1989, Harper's Bazaar named her one of America's ten most beautiful women.

Leigh's career advanced significantly in 1990 when she received the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress for two distinct roles: the streetwalker Tralala in Last Exit to Brooklyn and Susie, a young prostitute, in Miami Blues. She appeared in the firefighter drama Backdraft in 1991 and the crime drama Rush the same year, playing an undercover cop who becomes addicted to drugs. Her role in Single White Female in 1992, portraying a mentally ill woman who terrorizes her roommate, brought her to a wider mainstream audience and earned her the MTV Movie Award for Best Villain at the 1993 MTV Movie Awards.

Leigh co-starred with Kathy Bates in the 1995 Stephen King adaptation Dolores Claiborne, playing a pill-dependent woman concealing a history of childhood sexual abuse. That same year she starred in Georgia, written by her mother Barbara Turner, as Sadie Flood, a drug-addicted rock singer. For the role she dropped to 90 pounds and performed all songs live, including an eight-and-a-half-minute rendition of Van Morrison's Take Me Back. Her portrayal of Dorothy Parker in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle in 1994 earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination. In 2001, she co-wrote and co-directed The Anniversary Party with Alan Cumming, in which her half-sister Mina Badie also appeared. She went on to star in the crime drama Road to Perdition in 2002 and the family drama Margot at the Wedding in 2007.

Leigh received a recurring role on the Showtime comedy-drama series Weeds from 2009 to 2012. Her voice performance in Charlie Kaufman's animated film Anomalisa in 2015 earned critical acclaim. That same year, her portrayal of fugitive Daisy Domergue in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight brought her nominations for both the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. From 2017 to 2021, she starred in the Netflix comedy-drama series Atypical and appeared in the science fiction films Annihilation in 2018 and Possessor in 2020. She subsequently joined the cast of the fifth season of the crime drama series Fargo in 2023.

Leigh's stage work includes both off-Broadway and Broadway appearances. Off-Broadway, she received a Drama Desk Award nomination for her performance as Beverly Moss in Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party. Her Broadway debut came in 1998 when she joined the musical Cabaret as a replacement in the role of Sally Bowles. Her Broadway career, which extended through 2011, also included appearances in The House of Blue Leaves and Proof. Her work in Proof earned her a Drama Desk Award Outstanding Actress in a Play nomination in 2006.