'''Rachel Weisz''' (surname pronounced or "vice"; it is a variant spelling of the German word ''weiss'', "white") (born March 7, 1971 in London, England) is an English Academy Award and Golden Globe-winning, and BAFTA-nominated actress.
Biography
Early life
Weisz was born in London in 1971. Her father, George Weisz, is a Hungarian-born Jewish inventor whose family fled to England in order to escape Nazi persecution. Her mother, Edith, is a Vienna-born Austrian Catholic psychoanalyst and aspiring actress of 3/4 Ashkenazi Jewish and 1/4 Italian Catholic heritage. Weisz was raised Jewish.
Weisz was educated at North London Collegiate School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she graduated with a 2:1 in English. During her university years she appeared in various student productions, co-founding a student drama group called ''Cambridge Talking Tongues'', which went on to win a Guardian Student Drama Award at the Edinburgh Festival for an improvised piece called ''Slight Possession''.
Personal life
Weisz is engaged to American filmmaker Darren Aronofsky. They have a son, Henry Chance, born on May 31, 2006.http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2006-06-01-weisz-baby_x.htm The couple reside in Brooklyn. Weisz previously dated actor Alessandro Nivola, actor Neil Morrissey, and director Sam Mendes.http://www.rachel-weisz.net/pressarchives/index.php?id=8
Career
Her breakthrough role was that of Gilda in Welsh director Sean Mathias's 1995 West End revival of Noël Coward's 1933 play ''Design for Living'' at the Gielgud Theatre. Having already worked for television, with strong parts in major UK series such as Inspector Morse (1993), Weisz started her cinema career in 1995 with ''
Chain Reaction'' and then appeared Bernardo Bertolucci's ''
Stealing Beauty''. She followed this work with more English films including ''Swept from the Sea,'' ''
The Land Girls'', and Michael Winterbottom's ''I Want You.'' Since then she has starred in a number of films including ''
The Mummy'' (1999), ''
Enemy at the Gates'' (2001), ''
About a Boy'' (2002), ''
Runaway Jury'' (2003) and ''
Constantine'' (2005). Her stage work includes the role of Catherine in a London production of Tennessee Williams' ''Suddenly Last Summer'' and Evelyn in Neil LaBute's ''
The Shape of Things'' at the Almeida Theatre (also film). In a recent interview, Ms. Weisz expressed her admiration for Harry Houdini, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jackie Onassis, amongst others, but it is for singer Elvis Presley that she keeps her greatest love.
thumb|250px|Weisz in ''The Constant Gardener (film)|The Constant Gardener'' (2005).
In 2005, Weisz starred in ''
The Constant Gardener'', a film adaptation of a John le Carré thriller of the same title set in the slums of Kibera and Loiyangalani, Kenya. For this role,
