Rene Russo

Rene Marie Russo (born February 17, 1954) is an American actress and model.

Russo was born in 1954 in Burbank, California, to Shirley (née Balocca), a factory worker and barmaid, and Nino Russo, a sculptor and car mechanic who left the family when Russo was two.

Russo has Italian ancestry.

She began her career as a fashion model in the 1970s, appearing on magazine covers such as Vogue and Cosmopolitan.

She became one of the top models of the 1970s and early 1980s, appearing on magazine covers for Vogue, Mademoiselle, and Cosmopolitan, as well as advertisements for perfume and cosmetics.

After allegedly being spotted at a 1972 Rolling Stones concert by John Crosby, an agent from International Creative Management, Russo originally began her career as a model.

With Crosby's encouragement, Russo applied to, and was signed by, Ford Modeling Agency.

Russo grew up with her mother and her sister, Toni (who was married to lyricist Bernie Taupin between 1979 and 1991), and attended Burroughs High School, where her classmates included director Ron Howard.

She was plagued with scoliosis and had to wear a full-torso brace.

Her height also earned her the nickname "Jolly Green Giant" from her classmates.

Russo made her debut in a television series in 1987, with a supporting role in the short-lived ABC production Sable, based on the comic book, Jon Sable: Freelance by Mike Grell.

She made her feature film debut as the girlfriend of a former baseball star in Major League, a comedy written and directed by David S. Ward.

The film was a critical success.

She made her film debut in the 1989 comedy Major League, and rose to international prominence in a number of thrillers and action films throughout the 1990s, including Lethal Weapon 3 (1992), In the Line of Fire (1993), Outbreak (1995), Get Shorty (1995), Ransom (1996), Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), and The Thomas Crown Affair (1999).

In 1990, Russo appeared in the fantasy comedy film Mr. Destiny, with Jim Belushi, playing the wife in what was an alternate reality of an ordinary guy's life.

Throughout the 1990s, Russo took on major roles in a number of commercially and critically successful films.

In 1991, she had her first leading film role in One Good Cop, as the wife of a New York City Police Department detective (played by Michael Keaton).

In 1992, Russo achieved breakout success with her role as internal affairs detective Lorna Cole, opposite Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, in the action film Lethal Weapon 3.

The film made US$320 million worldwide, becoming the fifth highest-grossing film of 1992 and the highest-grossing film in the Lethal Weapon film series.

Her other 1992 film release was the science fiction film Freejack, which despite an overall negative response, earned Russo a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1993, she starred with Clint Eastwood in the thriller film In the Line of Fire, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, playing a federal agent involved with the sole active-duty Secret Service agent remaining from the detail guarding John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, at the time of his assassination in 1963.

The film made US$176.9 million globally, and received three Academy Awards nominations.

In 1995, Petersen cast her as a medical doctor, who uncovers a newly discovered Ebola-like virus which came to the United States from Africa in an infected monkey, in the medical disaster film Outbreak, with Dustin Hoffman.

The film grossed over US$189 million worldwide.

She starred as a B movie actress, opposite John Travolta, in the crime comedy Get Shorty, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld.

Upon its release, Get Shorty opened atop at the North American box office and remained number one for three consecutive weeks.

In 1996, Russo played a clinical psychologist and the love interest of a former golf prodigy with little ambition in the romantic comedy Tin Cup, with Kevin Costner, and reunited with Mel Gibson to play his wife in the crime thriller Ransom, directed by Ron Howard.

After headlining the family comedy Yours, Mine & Ours (2005), Russo took a five-year break from acting.

She returned to the screen as Frigga, the mother of the titular hero, in the superhero film Thor (2011), a role she reprised in Thor: The Dark World (2013) and Avengers: Endgame (2019).

In 2014, Russo starred in the acclaimed crime thriller Nightcrawler, for which she won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

She has also appeared in The Intern (2015), Just Getting Started (2017), and Velvet Buzzsaw (2019).

Vogue in a 2016 article, wrote: "In the '70s, Russo stood for a sexiness that was both accessible and aspirational: She could vamp it up with the best of them, posing for Francesco Scavullo in decadent furs, or swathed in Versace for Richard Avedon, but Russo wasn't your average pinup. The poise she brought to her images made her the first choice for editorial shoots that demanded models with tenacity, whether she was bound for the boardroom in a power suit or posing on a beach with Tony Spinelli".

Modeling assignments began to wane for Russo as she entered her 30s.

She did a few more commercials and then turned her back on modeling for a period of time.

She studied theater and acting, and began appearing in theater roles at small theaters in Los Angeles and elsewhere in California.

At one point, she took acting lessons from veteran actor Allan Rich, whom she credits with introducing her to the craft of acting.

In a 2019 interview with Financial Times, she indeed described herself as a "geek", and admitted that the bullying she endured during high school made her drop out in the tenth grade.

Growing up, Russo did not have any "ambitions", remarking that she "was too busy just trying to survive, along with my sister and my mom —money was tight, my mom worked two jobs".

She began taking a variety of part-time jobs to help her family, including working in an eyeglass factory and as a movie theater cashier.

She eventually got scouted for modelling and went to New York City, which she described as a "scary place compared to where I grew up".