Rachel Griffiths

Rachel Anne Griffiths (born on 18 December 1968) is a Golden Globe-winning, Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-nominated Australian film and television actress primarily for her roles in movies, soap operas and television. She is perhaps best known for her roles as Peter Krause's wife, Brenda Chenowith, in Six Feet Under, Sally Field's daughter and Calista Flockhart's sister, Sarah Whedon, in Brothers & Sisters, and the Hollywood films such as Hilary and Jackie and Muriel's Wedding.

Early life
Born in Newcastle, New South Wales, Griffiths grew up in Melbourne with her art consultant mother and two older brothers. After earning a Bachelor of Education degree in drama and dance at Victoria College, Rusden, she began her career as a member of Woolly Jumpers, a community theatre group. She had her first success as the creator and performer of Barbie Gets Hip, which played at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 1991.

Career
Griffiths and Toni Collette were relative unknowns when they were cast as best friends and fellow outcasts in the 1994 film Muriel's Wedding. Her performance won her critical acclaim and both the Australian Film Critics Award and the Australian Film Institute Awards for Best Supporting Actress. She followed this triumph in 1996 with the role of an earthy, ill-mannered pig farmer's wife in Michael Winterbottom's Jude.

In 1997, Griffiths sparked a controversy after attending the opening of the Crown Casino topless and uninvited, her stated reasoning being the protest of the apparently one-sided views taken by the media and state government towards the new casino, and inspired by the story of Lady Godiva.

Griffiths joined forces again with Muriel director P. J. Hogan for her American film debut, My Best Friend's Wedding, in 1997. That same year she starred in My Son the Fanatic, a British film in which she portrayed a tough Yorkshire prostitute who becomes involved with a considerably older Pakistani taxi driver played by Om Puri.

Griffiths received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of real-life flautist Hilary du Pré opposite Emily Watson as her sister, famed cellist Jacqueline "Jackie" du Pre, in Hilary and Jackie (1998). Showing convincing range, she portrayed Johnny Depp's hysterical mother in 2001's Blow, opposite Ray Liotta.

In 2001, Griffiths was cast as one of the leads in Six Feet Under. Her performance as emotionally-scarred massage therapist Brenda Chenowith earned her Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards, as well as two Emmy Award nominations. In the third season, the actress missed four episodes due to her pregnancy. By the end of the show's run, she had appeared in almost every episode of the series. At present, she is part of the ensemble cast, co-starring alongside Sally Field and Calista Flockhart, of the dramatic series Brothers & Sisters, in which she portrays Sarah Walker Whedon, who inherits control of the family business after her father's death. Griffiths received a 2007 Emmy nomination for her work on the series.

Personal life
Griffiths is adept at accents, notably Australian, English, American, and Welsh.

Griffiths married Australian artist Andrew Taylor, on 31 December 2002 in Melbourne (her mother's brother, a Jesuit priest, officiated at the wedding). They have two children, son Banjo Patrick, born 22 November 2003 in Melbourne, and daughter Adelaide Rose, born 23 June 2005 in Los Angeles, California, thus giving the younger child dual US/Australian citizenship.

Selected filmography

 * Muriel's Wedding (1994)
 * Jude (1996)
 * Children of the Revolution (1996)
 * My Son the Fanatic (film) (1997)
 * My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)
 * Among Giants (1998)
 * Hilary and Jackie (1998)
 * Amy (1998)
 * Divorcing Jack (1998)
 * Me Myself I (film) (1999)
 * Very Annie Mary (2001)
 * Six Feet Under (2001) (TV series)
 * Blow (2001)
 * Blow Dry (2001)
 * The Hard Word (2002)
 * The Rookie (2002)
 * Ned Kelly (2003)
 * Brothers and Sisters (2006)  (TV series)
 * Step Up (2006)