-> 

v

"It's a very difficult thing for people to accept, seeing women act out anger on the screen. We're more accustomed to seeing men expressing rage and women crying." Rebecca De Mornay is famous for her starring role as Lana in the hit film, Risky Business. Since then, she has become notable for her roles as feisty women opposite some of the biggest acting stars of her generation.

 -> 

v

De Mornay first started pursuing her career in the entertainment industry back in 1981. Over the intervening decades, De Mornay has become a prominent actress and producer. De Mornay has appeared in 58 films during her career with several high-profile performances in recent years, including the hit show, Jessica Jones (2015).

A Transient Childhood

Rebecca De Mornay was born on August 29, 1959, in Santa Rosa, California. De Mornay's parents were Julie and Wally George. Wally George was a famous DJ-turned-TV host and her mother's mother was the famous vaudeville star, Eugenia Clinchard. De Mornay would see her parents get divorced when she was just two-years-old. Her mother would go on to remarry and it was from her stepfather that De Mornay would take her surname. 

 -> 

v

As a child, De Mornay attended Summerhill School in Leiston, Suffolk, England after moving overseas with her mother. De Mornay would return home to the United States in order to pursue her career as an actress. She would go on to train in New York at the prestigious Lee Strasberg Institute. De Mornay would find success in Hollywood at a relatively young age, breaking into the industry while she was still a teenager, but we'll get more into that later.

Landing Her Big Break

After training as an actress at the heralded Lee Strasberg Institute, De Mornay would find it relatively easy to find her way in Hollywood. Her first role was in the Francis Ford Coppola film, One from the Heart (1981). The film starred Harry Dean Stanton, De Mornay's real-life boyfriend at the time.

 -> 

v

Though De Mornay broke into the industry with a Coppola film, she would immediately upstage herself with her star-turning performance in Risky Business (1983). De Mornay would play the role of Lana, a call-girl who would go on to seduce Tom Cruise's character. De Mornay was celebrated for the performance, and work would instantly become much easier to find as a result. From there, De Mornay made her way into a number of films during the 80s including The Trip to Bountiful, The Slugger's Wife, and Runaway Train. Two of the prior three films were nominated for Academy Awards which showed that De Mornay knew how to pick her parts.

While De Mornay was finding herself consistently on camera, her work wasn't always getting recognition from the box office. After appearing in Backdraft (1991), alongside Kurt Russel, De Mornay would finally find financial success with The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992). In the film, De Mornay worked as a defense lawyer across from one of the biggest stars of the era, Don Johnson.  De Mornay would follow that project with a starring role in Never Talk to Strangers (1995) with Antonio Banderas, another huge name at the time.

 -> 

v

De Mornay would keep the good vibes rolling into the later 90s as she consistently scored decent parts. She'd land a role in The Shining (1997) mini-series as Winfred Torrance. De Mornay would then appear in A Table for One in 1999. Before the 2000s came calling, De Mornay would score a five-episode arc on ER (1999) as Elaine Nichols. De Mornay's work would begin to substantially slow down until an appearance in the blockbuster comedy, Wedding Crashers (2005). In 2013, De Mornay would land a starring role in the hit TV movie, Hatfields & McCoys as Mary Hatfield.

De Mornay's second renaissance officially began in 2015 when she scored a leading role in Marvel's hit Netflix series, Jessica Jones. De Mornay was brought in to play the abusive alcoholic character, Dorothy Walker. Walker is the mother character to Jessica Jones' in-series best friend, Trish Walker. De Mornay appeared in 13 episodes of the hit show from 2015 to 2019. During that period of time, De Mornay also scored a two-episode arc on the series Lucifer (2016).

 -> 

v

As far as her personal life goes, De Mornay is relatively tight-lipped about her love life. She married Bruce Wagner in 1986, but the couple would divorce in 1990. Following her divorce, De Mornay would briefly date the singer Leonard Cohen. The two would collaborate on his 1992 album, The Future. The two didn't stay together, however, and De Mornay would find herself in a relationship with the sportscaster Patrick O'Neal. O'neal and De Mornay would date for seven years, and they would share two children together.