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DIANE VENORA (Queen Weilew) most recently starred opposite Clint Eastwood as his wife, Barbara Everett, in "True Crime." She recently re-teamed with Al Pacino and stars opposite Russell Crowe in the new Michael Mann film, "The Insider" to be released by Touchstone Pictures later this year. In 1998, Venora played the leading female role in "The Jackal" with Richard Gere and Bruce Willis, portraying the determined Russian career officer, Major Valentina Koslova. Venora also starred in Baz Luhrmann’s contemporary adaptation of "William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet" as Lady Capulet, and co-starred with Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore in Merchant/Ivory’s "Surviving Picasso." She received critical acclaim for her first performance with Al Pacino as his long-suffering wife, Justine, in Michael Mann’s "Heat." Other films include Martha Coolidge’s "Three Wishes" starring Patrick Swayze. Prior to taking a hiatus to raise her daughter, Venora earned a Golden Globe Award nomination and won the New York Film Critics Award for her performance opposite Forest Whitaker in the 1988 Clint Eastwood feature, "Bird." For television, Venora starred in a recurring role on the acclaimed series "Chicago Hope" and also starred in the miniseries "A.D. Anno Domini." A native of Connecticut, Venora graduated from Juilliard and began working extensively in theater, including roles in "The Country Wife" directed by Norman Ayrton at the Harvard Loeb Drama Center and "The Three Sisters" with the Princeton Acting Ensemble. This year, she starred in "Tongue of a Bird" at the Mark Taper Forum. Her other stage credits include performances in "The Winter’s Tale" with Christopher Reeve and Mandy Patinkin, as well as "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" directed by James Lapine and the title role in "Hamlet," directed by Joseph Papp, both for the New York Shakespeare Festival. She also portrayed Ophelia opposite Kevin Kline as the melancholy Dane in another production of "Hamlet" for the New York Shakespeare Festival, which was filmed for PBS’s "Great Performances." Venora has appeared in "Peer Gynt" and "School for Scandal" at the Williamstown Theater Festival and in "Messiah" at the Manhattan Theater Club. Later this year, Venora is set for the Miramax production of "Hamlet" playing Gertrude to Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet. The film also stars Sam Shepard and Bill Murray.
