Hope Davis

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Hope Davis (2010)

Hope Davis (born March 23, 1964 in Englewood , New Jersey ) is an American theater and film actress .

biography

childhood and education

Hope Davis is a distant relative of the English stage actor Noël Coward , who was a cousin of her grandfather. Her childhood was shaped by her friendship with Mira Sorvino , who lived across the street from her parents. Davis first tentative contact with acting was at the age of eight, when she and Sorvino wrote the play The Dutch Doll , which both girls performed for their neighbors. Hope Davis also studied ballet as a child and took part in the Joffrey Ballet's summer program. However, the dream of becoming a well-known prima ballerina shattered when the dance teachers informed her that she had started too late for a successful career. Hope Davis thought about it and decided to concentrate on her second passion, the theater . She gained her first real experience as an actress when she attended Tenafly High School in New Jersey, where she took part in several theater productions. After graduating from high school, Davis moved to Poughkeepsie , New York , where she attended Vassar College and remained true to her passion for the theater. At that time, the actresses Meryl Streep and Ingrid Bergman were among Davis' role models.

Career in the theater

With the aim of pursuing a professional acting career, Hope Davis went to London after completing her Bachelor of Arts in cognitive science and took acting lessons with professors from the Royal Shakespeare Company Chicago. Back in the USA, she went to HB Studios in the West Village of Manhattan , New York, where she was tutored by the well-known German-American stage actress and acting mentor Uta Hagen , who u. a. successfully accompanied mimes like Robert De Niro at the beginning of their careers. Hope Davis then appeared in a number of plays in Chicago , including in David Mamet's Speed ​​the Plow (1989) directed by Joel Schumacher , in which she played the role of a mysterious secretary alongside William L. Peterson and DW Moffett , who was portrayed in the Broadway production of Madonna . A year later followed in Chicago Eugene O'Neill's play The Ice Cream Man Comes , alongside Brian Dennehy , at the Goodman Theater.

Hope Davis made a name for herself in the New York theater world in 1991 in Romulus Linney's Can-Can and in 1992 in the Broadway production of Richard Nelson's Two Shakespearean Actors at the Lincoln Center Theater. In 1993, her appearance in Nick Silver's play Pterodactyls received critical acclaim and the New York Times dubbed Davis' performance "a star-making performance . " In 1995, the actress worked again with screenwriter Nick Silver, who wrote the lead role in his comedy The Food Chain for her. The play became a huge success and ran for a long time at the Westside Arts Theater. Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote about them: "The great Hope Davis ... these days there is no as in the theater ... Every emotion ... is Miss Davis by a stylized expression again, the visual is indeed poetry weaves." To Her other theatrical work includes Ivanov and the Delacorte theater production Measure for Measure, which was performed at the New York Shakespeare Festival, each with Kevin Kline ; Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet with Cherry Jones and Liev Schreiber ; Steve Tesich's Arts and Leisure at the Playwrights Horizon, and Tennessee Williams ' Camino Real and George S. Kaufmans and Edna Ferbers The Royal Family , alongside Blythe Danner at the famous Williamstown Theater Festival . Davis is also the co-founder of a theater company and starred in the play Alagazam ... After the Dog Wars , directed by fellow actor John Cusack .

First film roles

While Davis was very successful in the theater, her career in the film business began rather unspectacularly. In 1989 she auditioned for a role on the American television series Baywatch to no avail . In 1990 she started her film career with two small supporting roles. In Joel Schumacher's unusual thriller Flatliners , she acted alongside Kiefer Sutherland , Julia Roberts and Kevin Bacon . In the hit comedy film Kevin - Alone at Home , she played a small role as a French ticket saleswoman. After Davis concentrated more on her career in the theater, she was only seen in a film again five years later. In Barbet Schroeder's 1995 thriller Kiss of Death she played the friend of the later Oscar winner Nicolas Cage . In 1996 Davis had a major role in Nick Castle's comedy Mr. Wrong , which was not very successful at the US box office despite the participation of the famous US comedian Ellen DeGeneres .

Hope Davis received her first critical attention in a number of smaller independent films. In 1996 she played the leading role in Affair in Manhattan , in which she embodies the suspicious wife of Stanley Tucci , who is not averse to flirting . The road movie, in which Parker Posey , Liev Schreiber and Anne Meara also played, was received positively by the critics. In Bart Freundlich's drama The Family Secret, she was part of a family in New England along with Julianne Moore , Blythe Danner, Noah Wyle and Roy Scheider who were confronted with family problems during Thanksgiving dinner. 1998 followed for Davis in the leading role in Brad Anderson's comedy Next Stop Wonderland in which she played the unhappily in love nurse Erin Castleton at the side of Philip Seymour Hoffman . A year later, Mark Pellington's thriller Arlington Road followed, in which she can be seen as the young partner of Jeff Bridges , who tracks down a planned terrorist act and has to pay for it with her life.

After appearing in Lawrence Kasdan's small-town comedy Dr. Mumford , which is about a psychologist with a past, followed Hope Davis' first engagement on US television in 2000. In the television series Deadline , a drama series about a New York tabloid, she played on the side of Oliver Platt , Bebe Neuwirth , Lili Taylor and Tom Conti . Deadline , developed by the successful TV producer Dick Wolf ( Law & Order ), was discontinued after just one season. This was followed in 2001 by the unsuccessful Stephen King adaptation Hearts in Atlantis on the side of Anthony Hopkins and David Morse . The film studio Warner Bros. had changed several plot elements of the film adaptation, which was part of the short story Low Men in Yellow Coats from the Dark Tower series, so that the cult author's large fan base lost interest in Hearts in Atlantis .

Breakthrough in the film business

Only in the next two years followed three significant roles in independent productions, which gave Hope Davis her final breakthrough in the film business and demonstrated her versatility as an actress. In 2002 she directed the drama About Schmidt under Alexander Payne , in which she acted as the frustrated daughter of Jack Nicholson . In the same year follows the female lead in Alan Rudolph's drama The Secret Lives of Dentists . In the film, which is based on Jane Smiley's novel The Age of Grief , Hope Davis and Campbell Scott play the young married couple Dana and David Hurst, who live with their three daughters in a small town in the United States and run a dental practice there . At a local theater performance of Nabucco , David watches his wife backstage with another man who clearly enjoys their trust. Unclear what to do after this observation, David loses himself in imaginary conversations with an unhappy patient. His delusions lead to abnormal actions and the situation escalates.

After a theatrical engagement on Broadway in Rebecca Gilman's play Spinning Into Butter , Shari Springer Bermans and Bob Pulcini's film American Splendor followed . In the partly fictional, partly semi-documentary comedy, Davis plays the neurotic wife of underground comic artist Harvey Peaker (played by Paul Giamatti ), who became famous overnight in the United States in the 1980s with a comic series based on his life. The film, which received a standing ovation at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize, earned Hope Davis a 2004 Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She was also named Best Supporting Actress of the Year by the New York Critics 'Association for American Splendor and The Secret Lives of Dentists and won the Seattle Critics' Association Award . In June 2004, Davis became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).

After an almost two-year hiatus, Hope Davis released four new films in US theaters in 2005. In Richard Shepard's black comedy Murder and Margaritas ( The Matador ), she can be seen alongside Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear . Duma is an adventure film in which an orphaned cheetah becomes the best friend of a boy living in South Africa . The project marks the fourth collaboration between Davis and fellow actor Campbell Scott. In the proof - love between genius and madness is that of John Madden filmed stage play Proof by David Auburn . The drama that u. a. Winner of the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize , tells the story of a young woman struggling with the insanity of her late father, a gifted math professor . Davis stars alongside Gwyneth Paltrow , who plays the lead, as well as Jake Gyllenhaal and Anthony Hopkins in The Proof . In Gore Verbinski's comedy The Weather Man , she acts as the neurotic wife of Nicolas Cage, who as a popular meteorologist is about to move to New York for an attractive job.

In 2006 Hope Davis belonged to Marcia Gay Harden , Alfred Molina and Julie Delpy in the acting ensemble of Lasse Hallström's planned film The Hoax , in which Richard Gere sold a fictional Howard Hughes biography to a publisher in the 1970s . In the same year, Douglas McGrath's biographical work Kaltes Blut - In the footsteps of Truman Capote was created , in which the writer Truman Capote (played by Toby Jones ) had a close relationship with the convicted murderers Perry Edward Smith and Richard Eugene while researching his book in cold blood Hickock enters. Here Davis is at the side of u. a. See Sandra Bullock , Daniel Craig , Gwyneth Paltrow, Sigourney Weaver and Jeff Daniels .

In 2008 she was part of the ensemble of the award-winning independent film Synecdoche, New York by Charlie Kaufman . Between 2009 and 2010 she successfully played the part of Annette in Yasmina Reza's play The God of Carnage alongside Marcia Gay Harden, Jeff Daniels and James Gandolfini on Broadway , which earned her a Tony Award nomination . Also in 2009, Davis took on the role of a successful lawyer in the award-winning series In Treatment (2009), who blames her former therapist (played by Gabriel Byrne ) for her loneliness and anger at work. The part of Mia earned Davis an Emmy nomination in 2009 . Davis received another nomination for the most important American television award for her portrayal of the former first lady Hillary Clinton in Richard Loncraines The Special Relationship (2010). The drama is about the relationship between former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (played by Michael Sheen ) and former American President Bill Clinton ( Dennis Quaid ).

Hope Davis was first married to actor Ford Evanson , whom she met at the age of 18. Both married in 1987. The marriage was divorced in 1996 after dating in New York . Davis is married to Jon Patrick Wilson in his second marriage . She lives in New York with the actor, who played a supporting role in the drama The Secret Lives of Dentists , and has two daughters.

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Golden Globe Award

  • 2004 : Nominated for Best Supporting Actress for American Splendor
  • 2011 : Nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a TV series or feature film for The Special Relationship

Emmy

  • 2009 : Nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for In Treatment - The Therapist
  • 2010 : Nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a TV series or feature film for The Special Relationship

Tony Award

Further

Chlotrudis Awards

  • 2004: Nominated for Best Supporting Actress for American Splendor

Drama Desk Award

  • 1994: Nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Pterodactyls

Golden Satellite Awards

  • 2004: Nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Comedy or Musical) for American Splendor

Gotham Award

Independent Spirit Awards

  • 2004: Nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Secret Lives of Dentists
  • 2009: Robert Altman Award as ensemble member for Synecdoche, New York

New York Film Critics Circle Awards

  • 2003: Best Supporting Actress for American Splendor and The Secret Lives of Dentists

Seattle Film Critics Awards

  • 2003: Best Supporting Actress for American Splendor

Web links

Commons : Hope Davis  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Davis, Hope
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH Englewood , New Jersey