Patricia Arquette

Patricia Arquette (born April 8, 1968) is an American actress.

Arquette was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1968 to Lewis Arquette, an actor and puppeteer, and Brenda Olivia "Mardi" (née Nowak), who was involved in the arts and worked as a therapist.

Through her father, Patricia is distantly related to explorer Meriwether Lewis.

Arquette's father had converted from Catholicism to Islam.

Arquette's mother was Jewish, and her ancestors emigrated from Poland and Russia.

Her father's family's surname was originally "Arcouet", and his paternal line was of French-Canadian descent.

Her paternal grandfather was comedian Cliff Arquette.

Patricia's siblings also became actors: Rosanna, Richmond, Alexis, and David.

When she was a child, her parents offered to get her braces for her teeth, but she refused, claiming she didn't want to look perfect and "it didn't feel like it would fit who I was inside."

For a time her family lived on a commune in rural Bentonville, Virginia.

She has said they became poorer the longer they lived there and she believes that experience enlarged her empathy.

Her father was an alcoholic; her mother was violently abusive.

When Arquette was seven, the family relocated to Chicago.

They later settled in Los Angeles, California.

Arquette attended Catholic school, and has said that when she was a teenager, she had wanted to be a nun.

At the age of fourteen, Arquette ran away from home after learning her father was having an affair—she settled with her sister, Rosanna Arquette, in Los Angeles.

She has described her father as a working actor for industrial films, commercials and voiceovers – he was best known for his role as J.D. Pickett in the TV series The Waltons. Before pursuing a career in acting, Arquette had wanted to be a midwife.

She put this career prospect aside briefly in an attempt to gain acting jobs and gained success in the industry.

TV Guide noted that the film blends and recycles elements from the story of Bonnie and Clyde and Terrence Malick's "love on the run" film Badlands (1973).

It gave True Romance overall a favourable review for having "enough energy and verve to create something entirely fresh and infectiously entertaining".

Richard Corliss of Time Magazine made similar statements and also likened the film to the earlier, seminal Bonnie and Clyde.

She made her feature film debut as Kristen Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) and has since starred in several film and television productions.

She has received several awards including an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards.

In 1987, Arquette's first starring roles included pregnant teenager Stacy in the television film Daddy, boarding school student Zero in Pretty Smart, and Kristen Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, alongside Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger and Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson.

She reprised her role as Kristen in the music video to Dokken's Dream Warriors (1987).

She was asked to reprise her role in the sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988), but she declined the offer in order to do other projects.

She gave up the role of Tralala in Last Exit to Brooklyn due to her pregnancy with her son Enzo.

In 1988, Arquette played the daughter of Tess Harper in Far North. Her roles in the early 1990s were in low budget and independent films, including Prayer of the Rollerboys (1990) as love interest of Corey Haim's character, The Indian Runner (1991), which was the directorial debut of Sean Penn; and the drama Inside Monkey Zetterland. In 1992, she won a CableACE Award for Best Lead Actress in a Mini-Series for her portrayal of a deaf girl with epilepsy in Wildflower, directed by Diane Keaton and also starring Reese Witherspoon.

She had starring roles in several critically acclaimed films, including True Romance (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Flirting with Disaster (1996), Lost Highway (1997), The Hi-Lo Country (1998), Bringing Out the Dead (1999) and Little Nicky (2000).

In her early career, Arquette received the most recognition for her role as Alabama Whitman, a free-spirited, kind-hearted prostitute in Tony Scott's True Romance (1993).

The film was a moderate box office success but became a cultural landmark because of Quentin Tarantino's screenplay, which preceded Pulp Fiction, although some critics were deterred by the graphic violence.

In one scene, Arquette puts up a fierce physical struggle in a fight with James Gandolfini (as a viciously sadistic killer) which her character ultimately wins.

Arquette's performance received unanimous praise from critics.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times remarked that Arquette played her role with "surprising sweetness", while Peter Travers remarked that "Arquette delivers sensationally".

Arquette next appeared in the television film Betrayed by Love (1994), and the well-received biopic Ed Wood, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, where she portrayed his girlfriend.

From 2005 to 2011, she starred as a character based on the medium Allison DuBois in the supernatural drama series Medium, winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2005.

For playing a single mother in the coming-of-age film Boyhood (2014), which was filmed from 2002 until 2014, Arquette won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Further success came for starring as a prison worker in the miniseries Escape at Dannemora (2018) and as Dee Dee Blanchard in the drama The Act (2019).

They both won her Golden Globe Awards in addition to a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress for the latter.

She has since starred in the Apple TV+ thriller series Severance (2022) and comedy series High Desert (2023).