Anjelica Huston Bio
Anjelica Huston Bio
Anjelica Huston (
/'hju:stən/; born July 8, 1951) is an American actress. Huston became the third generation of her family to win an Academy Award, for her performance in 1985's Prizzi's Honor, joining her father, director John Huston, and grandfather, actor Walter Huston. She later was nominated in 1989 and 1990 for her acting in Enemies, a Love Story and The Grifters respectively. Among her roles, she starred as Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993), receiving Golden Globe nominations for both. Huston also played the Grand High Witch in the children's classic Witches, TheThe Witches in 1990 and is, more recently, known for her frequent collaborations with director Wes Anderson. She currently stars on the NBC musical drama, Smash.
Anjelica Huston: Early life
Anjelica Huston was born in Santa Monica, California, and is the daughter of director and actor John Huston and Italian-American prima ballerina Enrica 'Ricki' (née Soma), from New York. Huston spent most of her childhood in Ireland and England. She grew up in Saint Clerans House near Craughwell, County Galway. In 1969, she began taking a few small roles in her father's movies. In that same year, her mother, who was 39 years old, died in a car accident, and Huston relocated to the US, where she modeled for several years. While she modeled, she worked with photographers such as Richard Avedon and Bob Richardson.
Huston has an older brother, Tony, a younger maternal half-sister named Allegra, whom she called "Legs", and a younger paternal half-brother, actor Danny Huston. She is the aunt of "Boardwalk Empire" actor Jack Huston.
Anjelica Huston: Career
Anjelica Huston - Acting career
Anjelica Huston with her brother Danny Huston at the 62nd Annual Academy Awards in 1990Deciding to focus more on movies, in the early 1980s she seriously studied acting. Her first notable role was in Bob Rafelson's remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981). Later, her father cast her as the calculating, imperious Maerose, daughter of a Mafia don whose love is scorned by a hit man (Jack Nicholson) in the film adaptation of Richard Condon's Mafia-satire novel Prizzi's Honor (1985). Huston won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance, making her the first person in Academy Award history to win an Oscar when a parent and a grandparent had also won one.
Huston earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of an iron-willed con artist in Stephen Frears' The Grifters (1990). She also starred as the lead in her father's final directorial film, The Dead (1987), an adaptation of a James Joyce story.
She was then cast as Morticia Addams, in the hugely successful 1991 movie adaptation of The Addams Family. In 1993, she revived the Morticia role for the movie sequel: Addams Family Values. Anjelica also starred in the 1998 Hollywood blockbuster, Ever After: A Cinderella Story alongside Drew Barrymore and Melanie Lynskey as the Baroness Rodmilla De Ghent. She starred in two highly lauded Wes Anderson films, The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), as well as in 2007's The Darjeeling Limited. She voiced the role of Queen Clarion in the Disney Fairies film series starring Tinker Bell. On January 22, 2010, Anjelica was honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Huston will be part of the new television series, Smash, which will air on NBC in the 2011-12 television season.
Anjelica Huston - Directing career
Huston has recently expanded her horizons, following in her father's footsteps in the director's chair. Her first directorial credit was Bastard Out of Carolina (1996), followed by Agnes Browne (1999), in which she both directed and starred, and then Riding the Bus with My Sister (2005).
Anjelica Huston: Political activism
Huston in 2005.In 2007, Huston led a letter campaign organized by the U.S. Campaign for Burma and Human Rights Action Center. The letter, signed by over twenty five high-profile individuals from the entertainment business, was addressed to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and urged him to "personally intervene" to secure the release of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma.
Huston has donated $2,000 to Democratic political candidates John Kerry and Dick Gephardt.
Huston recorded a public service announcement for PETA, urging her colleagues in Hollywood to refrain from using great apes in television, movies and advertisements.
Anjelica Huston: Personal life
While working as a model in her teens during the late 1960s, Huston had a relationship with photographer Bob Richardson, who was 23 years her senior. Her on-and-off relationship with actor Jack Nicholson spanned from 1973 to 1989.
On May 23, 1992, she married sculptor Robert Graham. The couple lived in Venice, California, until his death on December 27, 2008.
She owns a ranch in Three Rivers, California, just east of Visalia, which she visits often.
