Anjelica Huston


Anjelica Huston is an American actress, director, producer, author, and former fashion model. Huston was the third generation of her family to receive an Academy Award, when she won Best Supporting Actress for her performance in 1985's Prizzi's Honor. She joined her father, director John Huston, and grandfather, actor Walter Huston, in gaining this recognition. She received Academy Award nominations for her performances in Enemies: A Love Story and The Grifters, for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress, respectively.
Huston earned BAFTA nominations for her work in two films directed by Woody Allen: Crimes and Misdemeanors and Manhattan Murder Mystery. She received acclaim for her portrayal of the Grand High Witch in the 1990 film adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches, and earned two Golden Globe nominations for starring as Morticia Addams in The Addams Family and its sequel Addams Family Values.
In the 21st century, she had frequently worked with director Wes Anderson; their collaborations have included The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and The Darjeeling Limited.
On television, Huston has had recurring roles on Huff, Medium, and Transparent. She won a Gracie Award for her portrayal of Eileen Rand on Smash.
Huston made her directorial debut with the 1996 film Bastard Out of Carolina. This was followed by Agnes Browne, in which she also starred. She has written two memoirs: A Story Lately Told and Watch Me.

Early life

Huston was born in 1951 in Santa Monica, California, the daughter of director and actor John Huston and prima ballerina and model Enrica Soma. Huston's paternal grandfather was Canadian-born actor Walter Huston. Huston has Scottish, Scotch-Irish, English and Welsh ancestry from her father, and Italian from her mother. Her father became an Irish citizen in 1964. She spent much of her childhood with him in Ireland, which she still considers home, particularly near Craughwell, County Galway. She attended school at Kylemore Abbey. Huston later lived in England, where she attended Holland Park School.
Huston has a complex family because of her parents' multiple marriages. 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.
In the late 1960s, Huston began taking a few small roles in movies directed by her father. She began other small roles too; her hands were substituted for Deborah Kerr's in the British Casino Royale. In 1969 she starred in A Walk with Love and Death, where she played the 16-year-old French noblewoman Claudia opposite Assi Dayan. Huston had been in the running to play Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, but her father decided to cast her in A Walk with Love and Death. She had been reluctant to perform in that. On set she clashed with her father, and critics derided her performance.
That year, her mother died in a car accident, at the age of 39. The young Huston relocated to the United States, where she modeled for several years. While modeling, she worked with photographers such as Richard Avedon and Bob Richardson. In the early 1970s, Huston, with Pat Cleveland, Pat Ast, Elsa Peretti, Karen Bjornson, Alva Chinn, and others, became one of fashion designer Halston's favored troupe of models, nicknamed the Halstonettes.

Career

Acting career

Huston studied acting in the early 1980s after deciding to focus more on films. Her first notable role was in Bob Rafelson's remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice. Later, her father cast her as Maerose, daughter of a Mafia don whose love is scorned by a hit man in the film adaptation of Richard Condon's Mafia-satire novel Prizzi's Honor. Huston won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance, making her the first person in Academy Award history to win an Oscar when a parent and a grandparent had also won one. She also earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a con artist in Stephen Frears' The Grifters. She starred as the lead in her father's final directorial film, The Dead, an adaptation of a James Joyce story.
She was then cast as Morticia Addams in the hugely successful 1991 movie adaptation of The Addams Family. In 1993, she reprised the role for the sequel Addams Family Values, and also played Lainey Eberlin, a mother struggling to parent her autistic child, in the ABC miniseries Family Pictures. Both roles garnered her Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Comedy or Musical and Miniseries or Television Film, respectively. Huston collaborated twice with director Woody Allen on his films Crimes and Misdemeanors and Manhattan Murder Mystery, both of which earned her BAFTA nominations for Best Supporting Actress.
She also starred in the 1998 Hollywood blockbuster Ever After: A Cinderella Story alongside Drew Barrymore and Melanie Lynskey as the Baroness Rodmilla De Ghent. She starred in two Wes Anderson films, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, as well as appearing in a minor role in 2007's The Darjeeling Limited. She voiced the role of Queen Clarion in the Disney Fairies film series starring Tinker Bell. Huston received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on January 22, 2010. In 2011, Huston was in the film . Huston later appeared on the NBC television series Smash as Broadway producer Eileen Rand. In 2015 and 2016 Huston appeared in the second and third seasons of the Amazon Video series Transparent. In 2019, she appeared in a supporting role as the Director in ''."

Directing career

Huston has followed in her father's footsteps in the director's chair. Her first directorial credit was Bastard Out of Carolina, followed by Agnes Browne, in which she both directed and starred, and then Riding the Bus with My Sister. For over 20 years, Huston has been developing a film project on Maud Gonne and William Butler Yeats. During a visit to the National Library of Ireland in 2010 to look through the Yeats collection, Huston said that she was still developing the project.

Activism

Huston led a letter campaign organized by the U.S. Campaign for Burma and Human Rights Action Center in November 2007. The letter, signed by over twenty five high-profile individuals from the entertainment business, was addressed to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and urged him to "personally intervene" to secure the release of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma.
Huston currently sits on the advisory council of Save the Chimps, the largest chimp sanctuary and rescue in history. Houston has narrated the educational video Save the Chimps History exposing the cruelty of chimpanzee abuse by laboratories, entertainment and the NASA program Monkeys and apes in space, which sent primates into space often resulting in death by impact and explosion.
In 1995, Huston donated $500 to the Irish republican political party Sinn Féin. She has also attended Sinn Féin events and supported Martin McGuinness in his bid for the Presidency of Ireland in 2011.
In December 2012, Huston recorded a public service announcement for PETA urging her colleagues in Hollywood to refrain from using great apes in television, films, and advertisements. The animal rights organization subsequently named her their Person of the Year 2012. In 2018, she donated her fur coats to the homeless and animal shelters.

Personal life

In her 2014 book A Story Lately Told, Huston refers to a sexual relationship with actor James Fox when she was a teenager. In 1969, at age 18, Huston began dating photographer Bob Richardson, who was 23 years her senior. Their relationship lasted almost four years. She met Jack Nicholson in 1973 and they lived together, on and off, from that year until 1990, when the media reported he had fathered a child with Rebecca Broussard. During a split with Nicholson in the late 1970s, Huston dated Ryan O'Neal who allegedly assaulted her.
Huston was an inadvertent witness in the Roman Polanski sexual abuse case in March 1977, when she encountered Polanski and his 13-year old victim by chance in the home of her then-boyfriend Jack Nicholson. When authorities searched the house in connection to the accusations against Polanski, Huston was arrested for cocaine possession, but she was never charged because the search and seizure of her handbag had been illegal. Although she had witnessed no abuse, Huston was subsequently embroiled in the publicity surrounding Polanski's trial as a rumored witness for the prosecution, though she was not ultimately called.
On May 23, 1992, Huston married sculptor Robert Graham. The couple lived in a three-story house, designed by Graham, at 69 Windward Avenue in Venice, California, until his death on December 27, 2008. She does not have any children.
Huston wrote her memoirs as one 900-page book, but she split it into two books at her publisher's urging.
She was a close friend of actor Gregory Peck, whom her father directed in Moby Dick. The two first met on the set of the film when she was four years old while Peck was in costume as Captain Ahab. Decades later, after her father's death, Huston reunited with Peck and maintained a friendship that lasted until his death.
Huston's home went on the market for $18 million in 2010, but initially failed to sell. In September 2012, the New York Post reported that Huston was planning to transform her house into a private social club; the actress was said to have accepted $12 million for the property and to serve on the advisory board for a new private club to be based there. In April 2014, Huston sold the house for $11.15 million.

Filmography

Film

YearTitleRoleNotes
1969'Claudia
1976'Edna
1981'Madge Gorland
1982Rose for EmilyMiss Emily Grierson
1982FrancesMental patient
1984This Is Spinal TapPolly Deutsch
1984'Maida
1985Prizzi's HonorMaerose Prizzi
1986Captain EOThe Supreme Leader
1987Gardens of StoneSamantha Davis
1987'Gretta Conroy
1988Mr. NorthPersis Bosworth-Tennyson
1988'Mrs. Rattery
1989Crimes and MisdemeanorsDolores Paley
1989Enemies, A Love StoryTamara Broder
1990'Miss Eva Ernst/The Grand High Witch
1990'Lilly Dillon
1991'Morticia Addams
1992'Herself
1993Manhattan Murder MysteryMarcia Fox
1993Addams Family ValuesMorticia Addams
1995'Carmela Perez
1995'Mary
1996Bastard Out of CarolinaDirector
1998PhoenixLeila
1998Ever AfterBaroness Rodmilla de Ghent
1998Buffalo '66Jan Brown
1999Agnes BrowneAgnes BrowneAlso director and producer
2000'Fanny Assingham
2001'Jennifer Adler
2001'Etheline Tenenbaum
2002Barbie as RapunzelGothelVoice
2002Blood WorkDr Bonnie Fox
2003Daddy Day CareMiss Harridan
2003'Queen of the SelenitesEnglish dub
2004'Eleanor Zissou
2006Art School ConfidentialArt History Teacher
2006'President Castilla
2006Material GirlsFabiella Du Mont
2006Seraphim FallsMadame Louise
2006These Foolish ThingsLottie Osgood
2007'Patricia Whitman
2008ChokeIda Mancini
2008Tinker BellQueen ClarionVoice
2009Tinker Bell and the Lost TreasureQueen ClarionVoice
201150/50Diane Lerner
2011The Big YearAnnie Auklet
2011'Miss Battle-Axe
2011Pixie Hollow GamesQueen ClarionVoice
2012Secret of the WingsQueen ClarionVoice
2014The Pirate FairyQueen ClarionVoice
2015Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeastQueen ClarionVoice
2016The CleanseLily
2017Thirst StreetNarratorVoice
2017TroubleMaggieAlso executive producer
2018Isle of Dogs PoodleCredit only
2019The Director
2019Arctic DogsMagdaVoice
2020The French DispatchPost-production

Television

YearTitleRoleNotes
1982Laverne & ShirleyGeraldineEpisode: "An Affair to Forget"
1983Laverne & ShirleyMiss ParisEpisode: "Miss Paris"
1986Saturday Night LiveCo-hostEpisode: "Anjelica Huston & Billy Martin/George Clinton & Parliament-Funkadelic"
1988Lonesome DoveClara Allen4 episodes
1993Family PicturesLainey EberlinTelevision movie
1995Buffalo GirlsCalamity JaneTelevision movie
2001'Viviane, Lady of the LakeTelevision movie
2002Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie StarNarrator
2004Iron Jawed AngelsCarrie Chapman CattTelevision movie
2005Riding the Bus with My SisterTelevision movie; director
2006HuffDr. Lena Markova4 episodes
2008–2009MediumCynthia Keener8 episodes
2011American Dad!Superintendent Ellen Riggs 2 episodes
2012–2013SmashEileen Rand32 episodes
2014–2020BoJack HorsemanAngela Diaz 2 episodes
2015–2016TransparentVikki7 episodes
2016All Hail King JulienJulienne 5 episodes
2016–2018'Queen Usurna 15 episodes
2017The Watcher in the WoodsMrs. AylwoodTelevision film
2018Angie TribecaAnna SummourEpisode: "Just the Fat, Ma'am"

Books