-Anjelica Huston
Let's try and ignore the fact that Anjelica Huston comes from a film family dynasty. Although, her family history and childhood are two of the things that make her seem so enigmatic and worldly.
With her father, John Huston being an actor and director, and her mother, Enrica Soma, a ballerina, Huston spent most of her childhood living in England and Ireland. She returned to the United States when she was a teenager, soon after her mother died in a car accident. At 5'10'', Huston took up modeling for a few years.
Marie Clare (1973)
In the early 1980s, she began to seriously study acting, and in 1985, her father cast her as Maerose, the daughter of a Mafia don in Prizzi's Honor. Huston played opposite Jack Nicholson, her boyfriend at the time. She won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the role (her father and grandfather have Oscars as well.)
Huston worked steadily in the 1980s and early 90s, earning another Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress, for her role as Lilly Dillon in The Grifters. Other notable parts were in Francis Ford Coppola's Gardens of Stone and her father's adaptation of James Joyce's The Dead.
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Never one to take commercial parts, Huston hooked up with another director, Wes Anderson, in the early 2000s and has been an essential part of his ensemble films, including The Royal Tenenbaums (playing matriarch Etheline Tenenbaum), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and The Darjeeling Limited.
More recently, Huston has made the transition from film to television, appearing as the Broadway producer Eileen Rand in NBC's new series, Smash.
At the start of the series, Eileen is going through a tumultuous divorce. Having high hopes for anything Huston is in, it was a bit disappointing to watch her throw her martinis into the face of her ex-husband for the first couple episodes. It seemed Eileen was going to be stuck in the 'sassy older lady that the audience sees too little of' box, but it seems that's starting to change.
Eileen seems to be a strong and well-known producer in this televised version of Broadway, but we see as her storyline unravels that her relationship with her husband was the prime source of her monetary connections—both in her personal and professional life. It's an interesting take on a 'career woman' character. Over the past couple episodes, Eileen has started to come into her own, managing to find money (or at least interest) in the musical she is producing, based on Marilyn Monroe's life, as well as step out of her husband's shadow and move into a new apartment on the Lower East Side.
She's also taken to spending time at a local watering hole which is quite different from her usual table at Sardi's. Eileen also seems to have caught the eye of the bartender, Nick (All My Children's Thorsten Kaye). Meryl Streep's daughter, Grace Gummer, even showed up in the last episode, to portray Eileen's wayward daughter.
With those two promising additions to her character, it will be interesting to see where Eileen Rand lands by season's end. Hopefully sipping martinis and celebrating her new found independence and success.
