Anjelica Huston

Anjelica Huston (born July 8, 1951) is an American actress and director known for often portraying eccentric and distinctive characters.

She has received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for three British Academy Film Awards and six Primetime Emmy Awards.

Huston was born at 6:29 P.M. on July 8, 1951, at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, in Los Angeles, to director and actor John Huston and prima ballerina and model Enrica Soma.

According to Huston, "the news of my arrival was cabled promptly to the post office in the township of Butiaba, in Western Uganda [and two] days later, a barefoot runner bearing a telegram finally arrived at Murchison Falls", where her father was filming The African Queen (1951).

Huston's paternal grandfather was Canadian-born actor Walter Huston.

Huston has Scottish, Irish, English and Welsh ancestry from her father, and Italian from her mother.

When Huston was 2 years old, her family relocated to Ireland, where she spent much of her childhood and which she still considers home.

Her parents rented what Huston called the "Courtown House" —a tall stone Victorian manor in County Kildare— for three years, before John Huston bought St. Clerans, a 110-acre estate in County Galway, in 1954.

She attended school at Kylemore Abbey, and later attended Holland Park School after relocating to England.

Huston has a complex family because of her parents' multiple marriages and extramarital affairs.

She has an older brother, Tony, and an adopted older brother, Pablo.

She has a younger maternal half-sister named Allegra, whom she called "Legs", and a younger paternal half-brother, actor Danny Huston.

She is the aunt of actor Jack Huston.

She once described herself as a "lonely child", explaining: "My brother Tony and I were never very close, neither as children nor as adults, but I was tightly bound to him. We were forced to be together because we were really quite alone. We were in the middle of the Irish countryside ... and we didn't see many other kids. We were tutored. Our father was mostly away [for filming]".

She had been in the running to play Juliet in director Franco Zeffirelli's adaptation of Romeo and Juliet (1968), but Huston withdrew her from consideration when her father decided to cast her as Claudia in A Walk With Love and Death.

Huston felt that she was wrong for the role, and has commented on the experience that her father "miscast me first time out and I think he realized that. I was ready to act, but I wasn't ready to act for him ... I was difficult, I didn't want to act with no makeup, although I'd have done it for Franco."

Father and daughter had a fractious relationship on set, with the young Anjelica having difficulty learning her lines and focusing, while her father grew more impatient and angry at directing her.

Critics derided her performance.

Huston and her mother were photographed by Arnaud De Rosnay —whom she met at age 16 in Switzerland— in October 1968 for Vogue.

Shortly afterwards, her mother died in a car accident, and the young Huston relocated to New York City as she "sort of fled London because of the memories; I didn't really know what to do with myself, and I wasn't quite sure what my father's intentions were for me —whether he was going to put me in a convent or launch me as an actress. Well, he'd already tried to do that, and we'd had a hard time on the making of that first film we did together".

Inspired by models Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy, Huston decided to pursue modelling, and through photographer Richard Avedon, a friend of her parents, she met Diana Vreeland who proposed to Huston her first American Vogue photoshoot, which took place in Ireland.

She described it as "very innovative because they presaged the whole sort of Gypsy look".

The daughter of director John Huston and granddaughter of actor Walter Huston, she reluctantly made her big screen debut in her father's A Walk with Love and Death (1969).

Her father's film A Walk with Love and Death (1969), where Huston played the 16-year-old French noblewoman Claudia opposite Assi Dayan, marked her screen debut.

Huston moved from London to New York City, where she worked as a model throughout the 1970s.

She was signed to Ford Models and in the early 1970s, worked in Europe "for a couple of years".

She walked the runway for brands such as Zandra Rhodes, Yamamoto, Armani and Valentino.

Along with Pat Cleveland, Pat Ast, Elsa Peretti, Karen Bjornson and Alva Chinn, she became one of fashion designer Halston's favored troupe of models, nicknamed the Halstonettes.

After breaking up with Richardson, Huston met actor Jack Nicholson and moved to California, to focus on acting.

Huston became a frequent subject of Bob Richardson, whom she lived with until 1973.

While she "didn't do much there for three years", she filmed a small role in The Last Tycoon (1976), based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel of the same name.

She decided to actively pursue acting in the early 1980s, and subsequently, had her breakthrough with her performance as a mobster moll in Prizzi's Honor (1985), also directed by her father, for which she became the third generation of her family to receive an Academy Award, when she won Best Supporting Actress, joining both John and Walter Huston in this recognition.

Bob Rafelson's remake The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), based on the novel by James M. Cain, featured Huston as the fling of a Depression-era drifter, played by Nicholson.

She achieved further critical and popular recognition for playing a mistress in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), a long-vanished wife in Enemies, A Love Story (1989), a con artist in The Grifters (1990), the Grand High Witch in The Witches (1990), Morticia Addams in the Addams Family films (1991–93), and an adventurous writer in Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993).

She has also acted in the miniseries Family Pictures (1993), Buffalo Girls (1995), and The Mists of Avalon (TV miniseries) (2001), as well as the series Huff (2006), Medium (2008–2009), and Transparent (2015–2016).

Her other films include The Crossing Guard (1995), Ever After (1998), Choke (2008), 50/50 (2011) and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019).

Huston directed the films Bastard Out of Carolina (1996) and Agnes Browne (1999); collaborated with director Wes Anderson in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), and The Darjeeling Limited (2007); and lent her voice to several animated films, mainly the Tinker Bell franchise (2008–2015).

She won a Golden Globe for playing Carrie Chapman Catt in the cable film Iron Jawed Angels (2004), and a Gracie Award for her portrayal of Eileen Rand in Smash (2012–2013).

In 2010, she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

She has written the memoirs A Story Lately Told (2013) and Watch Me (2014).