The first time I saw Diane Venora act was in The Jackal. I was so impressed with her sensitive and intense portrayal of Major Valentina Koslova that I rushed to the video store and borrowed all of her movies that I could find. She didn't disappoint me - while not all her movies were hits, she delivered spectacular performances in all of them.
Diane Venora is one of America's most remarkable, gifted and versatile character actresses today. At the age of 45, when her more established peers are calling for soft lighting, she is dodging bullets alongside Bruce Willis and Richard Gere in the run-fast-shoot-faster thriller The Jackal, playing a Russian agent with half her face covered by a hideous prosthetic scar. As if that weren't enough, the actress, who normally looks like a cross between Jessica Lange and Audrey Hepburn, wore the scar in public for a week, "to learn about the character."
Having shot to instant fame 15 years ago after playing the title role for Joseph Papp in Hamlet and garnering a Golden Globe nomination for Clint Eastwood's Bird, she gave it all up to look after her daughter in 1988. And this was the beginning of a 7-year long hiatus with only occasional plays.
"Here's the story," Venora says. After she and her husband, cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak (Speed), divorced, she was living in New York with her daughter, Madzia, and traveling often for work. "One day, when Madzia was 8, I was supposed to go to Paris to do this film called Impromptu," Venora recalls. "And my daughter says, 'You're selfish, and I'm not going with you.' " The next morning, Venora walked into the William Morris Agency and said: "I'm resigning from show business. I can't explain it to you because you'll never understand. It is not a Hollywood thing, but it's a life."
The recent directors she has worked with have nothing but praise for her.
Michael Caton-Jones, The Jackal - "You get good movie stars, and then you hire the best actress to get them to elevate. I had no intention of getting a piece of window dressing for everyone to stand around staring at. I wanted to give them a run for the money."
John McTiernan, Eaters of the Dead - "She has gravity and mass and size. If someone pushes, there's something to run into, there's a real person there."
After she finishes filming Seed, a short film for Lifetime in which she plays a policewoman searching for a man to inseminate her, Venora's hoping to take a sabbatical from angst, agita, action, and testosterone. "What I'd really like is to work with Bette Midler," she says. "Richard Gere told me a little glamour wouldn't hurt."
MainBiography
You are visitor to visit this page since 11 July 1998. This page was last updated on 25 July 1998. Maintained by
