Jennifer Jason Leigh

Leigh was born Jennifer L. Morrow in Hollywood, California, the daughter of Combat! actor Vic Morrow and Pollock screenwriter Barbara Turner.

As an adult, Leigh gravitated towards portraying fragile, damaged or neurotic characters.

She was initially cast as victims – a virginal princess kidnapped and raped by mercenaries in Flesh & Blood (1985), an innocent waitress dismembered with a semi truck in The Hitcher (1986), and a young woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the seedy nightclub inherited from her uncle in Heart of Midnight (1989).

Leigh and Cumming jointly received a citation for Excellence in Filmmaking from the National Board of Review, and were nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay.


More recently Leigh has been cast in smaller character roles: as gangster Tom Hanks's doomed wife in Sam Mendes's Road to Perdition (2002), as Meg Ryan's brutally murdered sister in Jane Campion's In the Cut (2003), and as Christian Bale's sympathetic hooker girlfriend in the dark thriller The Machinist (2004) (causing Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle to comment that "As the downtrodden, sexy, trusting and quietly funny prostitute, Leigh is, of course, in her element").

Leigh took on the singing, dancing lead role of Sally Bowles in the popular musical Cabaret on Broadway from August 4, 1998 to February 28, 1999, and took over from Mary-Louise Parker in Proof from September 13, 2001 to June 30, 2002.