|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Eliza Patricia Dushku (born December 30, 1980) is an American television and film actress, who has appeared in several Hollywood movies such as True Lies, The New Guy, Bring It On, and Wrong Turn. She is also well known for her acting on television, such as her recurring appearances on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel as Faith, as well as the main character in the series Tru Calling. A talented, soulful child actress who segued into teen and adult roles beginning in the late 1990s, dark-haired, brown-eyed siren in the making Eliza Dushku displayed a refreshing edginess as a young performer that transcended the typical girl-next-door sweetness and moved on to her sultry and downright scary portrayal of the villainous Faith on The WB's "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" (from 1998 to 2000). Raised in Massachusetts, Dushku appeared at the Watertown Children's Theater beginning in the first grade, performing in productions and also serving as a sign-language interpreter for hearing-impaired audience members. In 1991, Dushku was discovered in a casting search for the small coming-of-age romance "That Night" and tapped to co-star as the young, awestruck neighbor of a troubled sixteen-year-old (Juliette Lewis), who helps the older girl navigate her forbidden romance with bad boy Rick (C Thomas Howell). Dushku made an impressive screen debut, evincing all of the dreamy idealism of her character's youth without resorting to unrealistic sentimentality. The film was released in 1993, the same year that she was featured in her follow-up role as the daughter of Robert De Niro's sadistic character in the critically acclaimed biopic "This Boy's Life". 1994 saw her call Jamie Lee Curtis and Arnold Schwarzenegger Mom and Dad in James Cameron's humorous actioner "True Lies". Dushku was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of Philip R. Dushku, an Albanian-American administrator and teacher in the Boston Public Schools, and ex-wife Judith "Judy" (née Rasmussen), a university administrator and professor at Suffolk University, who is Danish American on both her grandfathers' side and English American on both her grandmothers' side. Dushku attended Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill, Mass and graduated from Watertown High School (Massachusetts) as a teenager. She was raised a Mormon, the faith of her mother (though she is not actively practicing). She has three older brothers, Aaron, Benjamin (Ben) (born February 5, 1976), and Nathan (Nate) (born June 8, 1977, in Boston, Massachusetts), the last of whom is a model and also an actor. Her parents divorced when she was still an infant. Dushku came to the attention of casting agents when she was 10. She was chosen at the end of a five month search throughout the United States for the lead role of Alice, opposite Juliette Lewis in the film That Night. In 1993, Dushku landed a role as Pearl alongside Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in This Boy's Life, a role that she said opened a lot of doors. The following year, she played the teenage daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies. She also had parts as Paul Reiser's daughter in Bye Bye, Love, as Cindy Johnson with Halle Berry and Jim Belushi in Race the Sun, as well as roles in a television movie and a short film. Dushku took some time off from acting to finish her junior and senior years of high school. She was accepted to the George Washington University in Washington, DC and Suffolk University in Boston, where her mother serves as professor of government and previously served as dean of the campus in Dakar, Senegal. Dushku made her TV debut at age 14 in the CBS "Hallmark Hall of Fame" presentation "Journey" (1995). After this, she returned to the big screen with featured turns as rebellious teens in the divorce-themed comedy-drama "Bye Bye, Love" (1995) and the Hawaii-set teen film "Race the Sun" (1996). Television beckoned again in the late 1990s, and Dushku made an auspicious comeback with a recurring role on The WB supernatural series "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer", playing the eponymous heroine's nemesis Faith, a fellow slayer with nefarious motives. Dushku's portrayal of the striking, black leather-clad villain was appropriately chilling, and won the actress legions of fans while paving the way for a post-adolescent career. After completing high school, Dushku returned to acting with the role of Faith Lehane on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a Slayer much more troubled than the main character Buffy Summers. Though initially planned as a five episode role, the character became so popular that she stayed on for the entirety of the third season and returned for a two-part appearance in season four, after which the remainder of her original story arc was played out as part of the first season of the Buffy spinoff series Angel. Repentant and rededicated, Faith returned as a heroine in a number of further episodes of Angel and in the last five episodes of Buffy. Dushku was inundated with piles of fan mail from legions of prisoners. She said that: I've been getting fan mail from maximum security penitentiaries and death row. What are the authorities thinking of in playing a show with young teenage girls to Death Row inmates? They write everything — disgusting things that you don't even want to know about. And they send me pictures 'Oh, here's a picture of me before I was incarcerated!' and there's some guy sat on the sofa with a bottle of beer and a moustache, and a big gut. It's so creepy. Way more creepy than Buffy. In 2000, Dushku starred in Soul Survivors, reuniting her with Race The Sun co-star Casey Affleck. She followed that up with the cheerleader comedy Bring It On with Kirsten Dunst, which was a surprising success at the box office that spawned straight-to-DVD sequels. In 2001, she appeared in The New Guy opposite DJ Qualls and City by the Sea opposite Robert De Niro and James Franco. The latter film garnered attention from a wider adult audience and several good reviews. The same year, Kevin Smith invited Dushku to be a part of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, where Dushku co-starred with Shannon Elizabeth, Ali Larter, and Ben Affleck. A surprise guest turn on a 2000 two-episode arc of the spin-off series "Angel" (The WB) reprised the role of Faith, and Dushku lightened up some that same year with a featured role in the sharp cheerleading comedy "Bring it On". In "Soul Survivors" (2001), she was alongside other young Hollywood favorites like Casey Affleck and Wes Bentley. 2002, though, proved a banner year in the actress' career, proving her ability and rising star status in two high profile features, "The New Guy", which marked her return to teen comedy, and the crime drama "City By the Sea", in which the spunky ingenue was reteamed with Robert De Niro. The following year, Dushku joined a series of young up-and-coming actors for the Rob Schmidt indie project "Wrong Turn" (2003). In 2003, she appeared in Wrong Turn, a horror film in which Dushku had the starring role, and The Kiss, an independent comedy-drama. Starting that same year, she also starred in a new Fox TV series, Tru Calling, where she played the main character, Tru Davies, a medical student whose grant is pulled out from under her, forcing her to take a job at a local morgue where she discovers that she has the power to "re-live" the previous day over again, an ability she uses to bring murderers to justice. She turned down a role for which she would have been in a spin-off of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (that would have been about Faith). She has had many roles as a "bad girl" in movies and relishes the opportunities. In an interview with Maxim in May 2001, Dushku says of her roles, "It’s easy to play a bad girl: You just do everything you’ve been told not to do, and you don’t have to deal with the consequences, because it’s only acting." Dushku starred in an off-Broadway production entitled Dog Sees God from December 2005, playing "Van's sister", a character paralleled with Lucy from the original Peanuts comic strip that the play production is based on. She quit in February 2006 along with several other members of the cast among rumours of alleged abuse from the producer, which were later dismissed. She played the lead character on Nurses, a hospital comedy/drama for Fox. This was the second FOX pilot in which she has been cast, but will not be broadcast. Dushku voiced the role of Yumi Sawamura in the English language version of the PlayStation 2 video game Yakuza, published and developed by SEGA, and released in September 2006. She appeared in the Simple Plan music video, "I'm Just a Kid", as the band's love interest, as well as Nickelback's video for "Rockstar". On October 1, 2005, she announced at Wizard World Boston that shooting had begun for Nobel Son in which she will star with Alan Rickman, Danny DeVito, Bill Pullman, and Peter Boyle. The movie was released at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and received exceptional reviews. Another project is On Broadway, an independent movie filmed in her native Boston. The movie is receiving great reviews and a few of them highlight Dushku's performance. It is currently being shown in many independent film festivals and has already won six awards. Variety announced on August 2, 2006 that Dushku would co-star with Macaulay Culkin in Sex and Breakfast, a dark comedy written and directed by Miles Brandman. The movie was released in Los Angeles in November 30, 2007 and on DVD in January 22, 2008. She will also star in Open Graves, a horror-thriller about a satanic game co-starring Mike Vogel. The movie will be released in 2008. She will play the main character in The Thacker Case and The Alphabet Killer, both based on real-life events and upcoming thrillers, one of them directed by Rob Schmidt whom she had previously worked with on Wrong Turn. Both movies will be released in 2008. She will co-star along with Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman, Chris Pine and Rachel Taylor in Bottle Shock, a drama about the Napa Industry of wine. The movie is directed by Randall Miller, who helmed Nobel Son. On August 26, 2007, Dushku signed a development deal with Fox Broadcasting and 20th Century Fox. Under the pact, the network and the studio will develop projects tailor-made for the actress. They also will approach her with existing pitches and scripts. Consequently, it was announced on October 31 that Dushku had lured Joss Whedon, famous for creating the Buffy The Vampire Slayer series, back to TV, as they agreed to create a new show called Dollhouse. FOX has already ordered seven episodes and the series is expected to premiere soon. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Celebrities Guide 
| WhoABC
Home : Disclaimer
: Terms
: Privacy
Policy : Contact
Us : Links All original content Copyright Celebrities Guide, WhoABC.com © 2004 - 2008. All Rights Reserved |