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"The bravest thing I ever did was continuing my life when I wanted to die." Juliette Lewis is an American actress from Los Angeles. Lewis came into her own with multiple award nominations for her work in Cape Fear in 1991. Having said that, Lewis has been a staple in Hollywood since first making her debut in 1980. Over the past four decades, Lewis has appeared in a number of critically acclaimed films that span across genres.

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While Lewis has firmly established herself as one of the finest working actresses in the industry, she also has a professional career that spans outside of the film industry. Lewis began performing with the rock band Juliette and the Licks until 2009. From there, she would release her own solo album, Terra Incognita. Since then, Lewis has performed with several different artists throughout her career.

Rough Upbringing

Juliette Lewis was born on June 21, 1973, in Woodland Hills, CA. Her parents are Geoffrey Lewis and Glennis Batley. Batley is a graphic designer while Lewis is a professional actor with a number of notable credits on his resume. Lewis is probably most well-known for playing Jean-Claude van Damme's bodyguard in the movie, Double Impact. Lewis has eight siblings including brothers, half-brothers, sisters, and half-sisters. 

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When Lewis was just two-years-old, her parents would get divorced. Lewis and her four siblings would split time between both households while growing up. Lewis's parents both encouraged her to pursue her creative side. By the time that Lewis was seven-years-old, she had decided that she wanted to act. By the time that she was 12, Lewis would land her first acting gig. By the time that Lewis was 15, she would be emancipated from her parents in order to escape child-labor laws that would prevent her from securing steady work. Lewis would drop out of high school that same year.

Lewis would get arrested for going into a club as an underage teenager. Her father would print out the mugshot and frame it in his living room. When she was 16-years-old, Lewis began to date Brad Pitt who was in his early 20s. The couple would stay together for nearly five years before calling it quits. The break-up would leave Lewis with serious emotional repercussions, and she would attend a detox center at the Florida Church of Scientology in order to clean herself up.

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Award-Winning Career

When Juliette Lewis began to pursue her acting career, she started off with quite the bang. Lewis made her professional debut in 1987 with a recurring role on the television series, I Married Dora as Kate Farrell. Lewis would be featured for the entire season, appearing in thirteen episodes Following a string of minor roles including My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988), The Facts of Life (1988), and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), Lewis would find her big break in the feature film, Cape Fear.

In 1991, Lewis was hired by Martin Scorsese to play young Danielle Bowden in the film Cape Fear. Only 18 at the time, Lewis was already rubbing elbows with one of Hollywood's most enduring legends. Lewis would take on the role and summarily steal the show in an infamous shared scene with Robert De Niro (and his thumb). The film would be well-received and Lewis would earn an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination for her efforts. Lewis would call this role one of the more 'validating' performances of her career, saying that it proved her process and instincts to be correct.

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Lewis would be launched into national stardom after Cape Fear and this would send her landing feet-first into a number of the best films of the 90s. Lewis would have a string of hits including What's Eating Gilbert Grape in 1993, Natural Born Killers in 1994, The Basketball Diaries in 1995, and From Dusk Till Dawn in 1996. All the aforementioned films were well-received commercially and critically with Lewis earning high praise across the board. The four films that we just mentioned would have Lewis working with Oliver Stone, Johnny Depp, Quentin Tarantino, Leonardo DiCaprio, and George Clooney. Talk about making an early impact!

Following her prolific run in the late 90s, Lewis would become a regular on film and television. In the intervening years since her heyday, Lewis has appeared in some of the biggest films in recent memory. Lewis shared the screen with Will Ferrell in Old School (2003), she'd land a starring role in the television show, The Firm (2012), and she'd also appear in August: Osage County (2013) alongside Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.

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While Lewis has enjoyed her time as an actor, she has always been open about her love of music. Lewis has gone so far as to say that music is her real passion. For that reason, Lewis would establish her own band, Juliette and the Licks. The group would tour around the world with their own brand of aggressive, brutal, and physical rock music. After the band broke up, Lewis would establish her second group, the New Romantiques, in order to continue pursuing her musical career. Lewis has frequently been described as the female Iggy Pop. Thus far in her career, Lewis has released five records. Her first release came in 2004 with the album Like a Bolt of Lightning. Most recently, Lewis released Future Deep in 2017.

Lewis has appeared in almost 100 credits throughout her career. Most recently, Lewis landed the lead role in the upcoming television series, I Know This Much Is True (202) as well as the feature-film Breaking News in Yuba County (2020) opposite Mila Kunis, Awkwafina, and Ellen Barkin.