Rebecca De Mornay



Rebecca De Mornay (born Rebecca Jane Pearch; August 29, 1959) is an American actress and producer. Her breakthrough film role came in 1983, when she played Lana in Risky Business. Her other notable film roles include Sara in Runaway Train (1985), Thelma in The Trip to Bountiful (1985), Helen McCaffrey in Backdraft (1991) and as nanny Peyton Flanders in 1992's The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.

Early life
De Mornay was born Rebecca Jane Pearch in Santa Rosa, California in 1959 (though many sources erroneously list 1961 or 1962     ). Her parents were Julie (Eagar) and Wally George (né George Walter Pearch), a disc jockey and later television host. Her paternal grandmother was vaudeville performer and child film actress Eugenia Clinchard.

Her parents divorced when she was two years old. She took her stepfather's surname, De Mornay, when she was five. She attended the independent Summerhill School in Leiston, Suffolk, England. She later trained as an actress in New York at the Lee Strasberg Institute.

Career
De Mornay's film debut was a small part in Francis Ford Coppola's 1981 film One from the Heart, which starred her real-life partner at the time, Harry Dean Stanton. Her star-making role came two years later in Risky Business (1983), as a call girl who seduces a high-school student played by Tom Cruise. In 1985, she played the title role in The Slugger's Wife opposite Michael O'Keefe, and co-starred in The Trip to Bountiful and Runaway Train, both of which were nominated for several Academy Awards. That same year, she appeared with Starship's Mickey Thomas in the music video for the song "Sara". The song reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on March 15, 1986.

She also appeared in Roger Vadim's provocative 1988 remake of And God Created Woman, and as the wife of Kurt Russell's character in Ron Howard's Backdraft (1991). One of De Mornay's most commercially successful films was the thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, released in 1992. She starred as a defense lawyer in Sidney Lumet's murder drama Guilty as Sin (1993) with Don Johnson. Then she appeared in the 1995 drama film Never Talk to Strangers opposite Antonio Banderas, for which she was also the executive producer.

In 2003, she guest-starred as primary antagonist in the first two episodes of season 2 of Boomtown. In 2004, she guest-starred as attorney Hannah Rose for the last few episodes of The Practice and the following year, had a brief role alongside Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers. De Mornay also starred in the 2007 drama American Venus.

In June 2007, she appeared in the HBO series John from Cincinnati with a starring role as matriarch of a troubled Imperial Beach, California surfing family and the grandmother/guardian of a teen surfer on the brink of greatness. She appeared in Darren Lynn Bousman's Mother's Day (2010).

In 2012, De Mornay played the role of Finch's mom in the movie American Reunion where she portrayed an attractive older woman and a love interest of Stifler. In 2015, she appeared in Marvel's Jessica Jones as Trish Walker's abusive mother.

Personal life
She married writer Bruce Wagner on December 16, 1986; they divorced in 1990.

Next De Mornay dated and was briefly engaged to singer Leonard Cohen. De Mornay co-produced Cohen's 1992 album The Future, which is also dedicated to her with an inscription that quotes Rebecca's coming to the well from the chapter 24 Book of Genesis and giving drink to Eliezer's camels, after he prayed for the help.

De Mornay has two daughters with ex-boyfriend Patrick O'Neal: Sophia (born November 16, 1997) and Veronica (born March 31, 2001).