Rebecca De Mornay (1959)

 personal life

She was born Rebecca Pearch on August 29, 1959 in Santa Rosa, California. Her father was Wally George (né Pearch), a disc jockey at the time.

When she was two, her parents divorced and at the age of five, she became known by her stepfather's surname, De Mornay. She has two step-brothers: Jonathan, a businessman, and Peter, a guitarist. She attended the independent Summerhill School in Leiston, Suffolk, England, but her high school degree was awarded in Kitzbühel, Austria. She later trained as an actress in New York at the Lee Strasberg Institute.

She had a two year relationship with actor Tom Cruise; the two lived together in New York after working together on Risky Business. She later married, secondly, to Ryan O'Neal's son, Patrick O'Neal from 1995 to 2002, which union produced two daughters. She had previously been married to Bruce Wagner.

In 1992, she was in a relationship with Leonard Cohen and helped him arrange and produce music for his album The Future.

 career

Her film debut was a small part in Francis Ford Coppola's 1982 film One from the Heart. Soon thereafter came her star-making role as a hooker who seduces a high school student played by Tom Cruise in Risky Business. In 1986, 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.

One of De Mornay's most commercially successful films came in the thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. She also appeared in a 1988 remake of Roger Vadim's provocative And God Created Woman, Ron Howard's Backdraft and in 1993, starred as a defense lawyer in Sidney Lumet's murder drama Guilty as Sin.

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 .