Rachel Griffiths

Rachel Anne Griffiths (born in 1968) is an Australian actress.

Griffiths was born on 18 December 1968 in Melbourne, Australia, and spent her early childhood on the Gold Coast.

She is the daughter of Anna and Edward Martin Griffiths.

She has two older brothers, Ben, and Samuel.

She moved to Melbourne at age five, with her mother and two older brothers.

Griffiths was raised Roman Catholic.

She recalled first being inspired to become an actress after watching the U.S. miniseries Roots as a child.

Griffiths attended Star of the Sea College, a Catholic girls' high school in Brighton.

She earned a Bachelor of Education degree in drama and dance at Victoria College, Rusden(now part of Deakin University ).

After being rejected from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Griffiths joined the Woolly Jumpers, a Geelong-based community theatre group.

In 1991, she wrote and performed the one-woman show Barbie Gets Hip, which played at the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 1991.

Raised primarily in Melbourne, she began her acting career appearing on the Australian series Secrets before being cast in a supporting role in the comedy Muriel's Wedding (1994), which earned her an AACTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

Griffiths portrayed Rhonda Epinstall, the best friend of Toni Collette's titular character, 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 in 1996 with the role of an earthy, ill-mannered pig farmer's daughter in Michael Winterbottom's Jude.

In 1997, she was the lead in Nadia Tass's drama Amy.

She had a role opposite Julia Roberts in the American romantic comedy My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), followed by her portrayal of Hilary du Pré in Hilary and Jackie (1998), for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1997, Griffiths sparked controversy after attending uninvited the opening of the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia, while topless.

She stated a wish to protest the views taken by the media and state government towards the new casino, inspired by the story of Lady Godiva.

Griffiths joined forces again with Muriel's Wedding 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 taxicab driver, played by Om Puri.

In addition to acting, she made her directorial debut with the short film Tulip in 1998, and directed several episodes of the Australian television series Nowhere Boys in 2015.

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).

After the release of Hilary and Jackie, Griffiths was cast in the starring role in the Australian comedy Me Myself I (1999).

From 2001 to 2005, Griffiths portrayed massage therapist Brenda Chenowith in the HBO series Six Feet Under, for which she earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 2002 and two Primetime Emmy Award nominations.

She has also had roles in the films Blow (2001), portraying the mother of George Jung; the historical drama Ned Kelly (2003); Step Up (2006), and the Julian Assange television biopic Underground: The Julian Assange Story (2012).

In 2001, Griffiths appeared opposite Natasha Richardson in the English comedy Blow Dry, playing a lesbian hairdresser who enters a hairstyling competition with her lover, followed by the Ted Demme-directed Blow (2001) opposite Johnny Depp and Ray Liotta, in which she played the mother of Boston cocaine magnate George Jung.

Nick Nunziata of IGN was critical of Griffiths' performance in the film, writing: "the only performance that doesn't ring true is that of Rachel Griffiths as Jung's mother...she just doesn't connect."

The same year Griffiths appeared in Blow, she was cast as one of the leads in the HBO drama series 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 over the series' five season-run.

In the third season, she missed four episodes due to her first pregnancy; her second pregnancy was written into the show's final season and she appeared in almost every episode of the series.

Onstage, Griffiths appeared in a Melbourne-based production of Proof in 2002, which earned her a Helpmann Award, and later made her Broadway debut in a 2011 critically acclaimed production of Other Desert Cities.

While starring on Six Feet Under, Griffiths continued to occasionally appear in the films, playing the supportive housewife of Dennis Quaid in the Walt Disney drama The Rookie (2002), and in the Australian biopic Ned Kelly (2003), opposite Heath Ledger, Geoffrey Rush, and Orlando Bloom.

In the spring of 2002, she appeared in a Melbourne production of Proof by the American playwright David Auburn, for which she earned a Helpmann Award for Best Female Actor in a Play.

In 2004, she played a key role in the Hallmark film adaptation of the Kent Haruf novel Plainsong.

She subsequently appeared on television as Sarah Walker Laurent on the ABC drama series Brothers & Sisters from 2006 to 2011, for which she was nominated for two additional Primetime Emmy Awards.

In 2006, she became part of the ensemble cast, co-starring alongside Sally Field, Calista Flockhart, Balthazar Getty and Matthew Rhys, of the dramatic series Brothers & Sisters, in which she portrays Sarah Walker, who inherits control of the family business after her father's death.

Griffiths received a 2007 Emmy nomination and a 2008 Emmy nomination for her work on the series, followed by 2008 and 2009 Golden Globe nominations.

Griffiths starred on the series until its conclusion in 2011.

In 2016, she appeared in a supporting role in Mel Gibson's biographical war drama Hacksaw Ridge, and in the docudrama miniseries When We Rise, written by Dustin Lance Black.