Something of a sex symbol for the art-house crowd, this alluring actress
has given some memorably daring and provocative performances, particularly
in films by her husband, director Nicolas Roeg. Discovered by a
photographer when she was twelve, Russell modeled and eventually dropped
out of high school to study at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. She
made her film debut in Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon (1976, as Robert
Mitchum's daughter) and held her own opposite Dustin Hoffman in Straight
Time (1978). It was her powerful, sexually frank work as a woman involved
with a psychiatrist in Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980) that
established her as a major actress, unafraid to take chances with risky
material. The film was also her first for Roeg; they fell in love (he is
nearly thirty years older) and married several years later. She went on to
work with him in Eureka (1981, released in 1985), a segment of the omnibus
film Aria (1988), Track 29 (also 1988) and Cold Heaven (1992) and was
striking as a very Marilyn Monroe-like actress in Insignificance (1985).
Russell's attempts at more "commercial" ventures have been
sporadic and largely unsuccessful (1989's Physical Evidence is probably a
nadir) but she was the best thing in the critically lambasted remake of
The Razor's Edge (1984) and she scored a popular success as the seductive
killer who intrigues Debra Winger in Black Widow (1987). She also made a
high-profile television appearance as Maureen Dean in the miniseries
"Blind Ambition" (1979). She was terrific as an undercover narc
in Impulse (1990) and did her best to make something out of the title role
in Whore (1991). Russell also narrated 1994's Being Human. |