Everything about Judy Davis totally explained
Judy Davis (born
23 April,
1955) is an
Australian
Academy Award-nominated and three-time
Emmy Award-winning
actress.
Biography
Personal life
Davis was born in
Perth and had a Catholic upbringing. She was educated at Loreto Convent and graduated from the
National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1977. She has been married to actor and fellow NIDA graduate
Colin Friels (who was also in the film
High Tide with her) since 1984. They have two children, Jack and Charlotte.
Career
First coming to prominence for her role as Sybylla Melvyn in the coming-of-age saga
My Brilliant Career (1979), for which she won BAFTA Awards for Best Actress and Best Newcomer, she also played the lead in such Australian New Wave classics as Winter of Our Dreams (1981) (as the waif-like heroin addict) and Heatwave (1982) (as the radical tenant organizer). Her first foray into international film came in 1981 when she played the younger version of Ingrid Bergman's Golda Meir in the television docudrama A Woman Called Golda. In 1984 she was cast as Adela Quested in David Lean's final film A Passage to India, an adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel of the same name. Although she and Lean reportedly butted heads during the film's production, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. She returned to Australian cinema for her next two films, Kangaroo, in which she displayed a fine affinity for accents as a German-born writer's wife, and High Tide, in which she gave what some critics believe is her finest performance as a foot-loose mother who attempts to reunite with her teenage daughter who is being raised by the paternal grandmother. She earned Australian Film Institute Awards for both roles, and a National Society of Film Critics award for High Tide's brief American theatrical run. In 1990 she played a brief cameo in
Woody Allen's
Alice. A busy 1991 featured acclaimed supporting roles as an ill-fated Southern ghostwriter in
Joel Coen's
Barton Fink, which won the
Palme d'Or at the
Cannes Film Festival and in
David Cronenberg's well-received adaptation of the hallucinogenic novel
Naked Lunch. She won an
Independent Spirit Award for her lively work as mannish authoress
George Sand in
Impromptu and returned to
E.M. Forster territory in
Where Angels Fear to Tread. Finally, she earned additional awards and recognition for her performance as real-life World War II heroine
Mary Lindell in the
CBS Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation
One Against the Wind. In 1992 she played a major role in
Woody Allen's
Husbands and Wives as one half of a divorcing couple. For this performance she earned an array of critics' awards as well as an Oscar and
Golden Globe nominations for best supporting actress.
Later memorable Davis roles include the mysterious,
schizophrenic mother of a teenager in boarding school in the well-made but little-seen
On My Own (1993), the lifelong Australian Communist Party member reacting to the downfall of the Soviet Union in
Children of the Revolution (1996), two more Allen films,
Deconstructing Harry (1997) and
Celebrity (1998), a high-strung
White House Chief of Staff in
Absolute Power (1997), a touching performance as a supportive mother in
Swimming Upstream (2003) and colorful supporting roles in two 2006 films,
The Break-Up and
Marie-Antoinette.
Much of her recent work has been on television, where she's scooped up an impressive collection of
Emmy Award nominations. She won her first Emmy for portraying the woman who gently coaxes rigid militarywoman
Glenn Close out of the closet in and she picked up subsequent nominations for her repressed Australian outback mother in
The Echo of Thunder (1998), her portrayal of
Lillian Hellman in
Dash and Lilly (1999), her frigid society matron in
A Cooler Climate (1999) and her interpretation of
Nancy Reagan in the controversial biopic
The Reagans (2003). She earned a second Emmy, among many other awards, for her portrayal of
Judy Garland in the 2001 television
biopic . In July 2006, she received her ninth
Emmy nomination for her performance in the TV film
A Little Thing Called Murder. Her tenth nomination came in 2007 for
The Starter Wife, Davis went on to win the
Emmy, but wasn't present. In August 2007 she appeared opposite
Sam Waterston in an episode of ABC's anthology series
Masters of Science Fiction, directed by
Mark Rydell. It has also been announced that Davis is to appear in the 2008 mini-series "Diamonds", green lighted by Alchemy Television Group.
Her stage work has been limited, and mostly confined to Australia. In the earliest stages of her career she played
Juliet opposite
Mel Gibson's Romeo, she also played both Cordelia and the Fool in a 1984 staging of
King Lear and her 1986 assumption of the title role in
Hedda Gabler was widely admired in Australia. In 2004 she starred in and co-directed
Victory, as a
Puritan woman determined her locate her husband's dismembered corpse. Internationally, she created the role of The Actress in
Terry Johnson's
Insignificance at the
Royal Court in
London and appeared in a brief
Los Angeles production of
Tom Stoppard's
Hapgood in 1989.
Offscreen, Ms. Davis protested
Prime Minister John Howard's decision to participate in the 2003 invasion of
Iraq.
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards
Nominations
1979 Australian Film Institute Award Best Actress in a Lead Role (My Brilliant Career)
1982 Olivier Award Actress of the Year in a New Play (Insignificance)
1982 Emmy Award Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or a Special (A Woman Called Golda)
1985 Academy Award Best Actress in a Lead Role (A Passage to India)
1989 Australian Film Institute Award Best Actress in a Lead Role (Georgia)
1992 Genie Award Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (On My Own)
1992 Emmy Award Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special (One Against the Wind)
1993 Golden Globe Award Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture (Husbands and Wives)
1993 British Academy Award Best Actress (Husbands and Wives)
1993 Academy Award Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Husbands and Wives)
1996 Golden Globe Award Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television
1998 Chlotrudis Award Best Actress (Children of the Revolution)
1998 Blockbuster Entertainment Award Best Supporting Actress - Suspense (Absolute Power)
1998 Emmy Award Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie (The Echo of Thunder)
1999 Emmy Award Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie (Dash & Lilly)
2000 Screen Actors Guild Award Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries (A Cooler Climate)
2000 Golden Globe Award Best Performance by an Actress in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television (Dash & Lilly)
2000 Emmy Award Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie (A Cooler Climate)
2002 Australian Film Institute Award Best Actress in a Lead Role (Swimming Upstream)
2003 Lexus IF Award Best Actress (Swimming Upstream)
2004 Helpmann Award Best Actress in a Play (Victory)
2004 Golden Globe Award Best Performance by an Actress in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television (The Reagans)
2004 Emmy Award Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie (The Reagans)
2006 Emmy Award Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie (A Little Thing Called Murder)
2007 Satellite Award Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television (The Starter Wife)
2008 Prism Award Performance in a TV Movie or Miniseries (The Starter Wife)
Runner-Up
1992 New York Film Critics Circle Best Supporting Actress (Husbands and Wives)Further Information
Get more info on 'Judy Davis'.
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