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Anxious to get on with her acting career, precocious Juliette Lewis dropped out of high school at age 14, passed a proficiency course and became an emancipated minor a year later, unbound by child labor laws. Despite having no training, she had already landed daughter roles in the Showtime miniseries “Home Fires” (1987) and the ABC series “I Married Dora” (1987-88), and though she would return as a series regular in “A Family For Joe” (NBC, 1990), starring Robert Mitchum, she found sitcoms constraining, resenting her directors’ insistence that she do nothing with her hands while standing stiffly, geared for the punchline. The TV-movie “Too Young to Die?” (NBC, 1990), which teamed her with longtime love interest Brad Pitt, provided a sample of the dramatic work to come, casting her as 15-year-old facing the death penalty for murder, but her feature debut as Chevy Chase’s daughter in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (1989) confined her to emotional territory very much in keeping with the sitcoms she loathed.

Lewis’ breakout role as the thumb-sucking nymphet struggling for independence from her warring parents in Martin Scorsese’s remake of “Cape Fear” (1991) rescued her from sitcom purgatory and earned her an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Her sensuous scenes with a psychotic killer (played by Robert De Niro) were the sensation of the movie, and Lewis’ small, brightly piercing eyes and pouty mouth suggested a waifish but free-spirited and sexually–indeed, sometimes dangerously–provocative young woman questing for answers and emotional fulfillment, shattering any notion that she would ever be sitcom fodder again. She stepped in for Emily Lloyd as the college student who becomes involved with her professor in Woody Allen’s “Husbands and Wives” (1992), sympathetically essaying the would-be “other woman” role in a film whose story of a crumbling marriage and the husband’s affair with a much younger woman mirrored the Allen-Mia Farrow breakup.

Expanding on her child-woman of “Cape Fear”, Lewis began her “psychotic waif” period as Gary Oldman’s peroxide blonde moll in Peter Medak’s hopped-up contemporary film noir “Romeo Is Bleeding” (1993) and adopted a horrifically hilarious spastic laugh and adolescent gawkiness for that year’s “Kalifornia”. On the road with homicidal partner Pitt and yuppies David Duchovny and Michelle Forbes, her clueless trailer-park Lolita was a perfect “enabler” for Pitt’s serial killer. Back on the road for “Natural Born Killers” (1994), more closely matched in sociopathic tendencies with fellow love-thug Woody Harrelson as they terrorized the Southwest on their killing spree, she captured the frighteningly odd emptiness of her character’s moral inattention. Tucked amidst these on-the-edge roles was an atypically sweet, reflective turn with Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio in the offbeat “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” (also 1993), but a reteaming with DiCaprio in “Basketball Diaries” (1995) returned her to familiar low-life terrain as a scuzzy hooker.

Unfortunately, the fast pace of Lewis’ personal life was mimicking her out-of-control onscreen reality, and she could no longer hide her drug addiction by the time “The Evening Star” (1996) required her life-imitating-art portrayal of a substance abuser. Taking an 18-month hiatus from movies, she cleaned herself out with the help of Scientology and returned to pictures in the independent film “Some Girls” (1998), acting for the first time with Giovanni Ribisi. Her next project was Garry Marshall’s much more ambitious “The Other Sister” (1999), which starred her opposite Ribisi as a mentally-challenged female coming of age sexually. Though many critics objected to the picture’s sitcom-like script, Lewis had chosen it for the compelling parallels between the life of her character (who had spent an extended period in an institution) and her own life as both were reentering the world after an absence. Opinion varied regarding her performance, but no one could deny the risk she took in taking the part or that she was completely honest in its creation.

Lewis was featured in some lighter fare, as a tough New Jersey girl in the 1980s period piece “Hysterical Blindness” (2002), the HBO original movie co-starred Emmy nominee Gena Rowlands and Golden Globe recipient Uma Thurman. She was next seen in the thriller “Enough” (2002), which starred Jennifer Lopez as an abused wife and mother who with the help of Lewis’ character tries unsuccessfully to escape her abusive husband (played by Billy Campbell). Thier bootless attempts result in a plot for Lopez to kill her abuser. Then, the following year, Lewis took the turn from serious to comical when she was cast as the girlfriend of Luke Wilson’s character in the hilarious feature, “Old School” (2003), a raucous comedy about a trio of thirtysomething buddies who try to recapture their college years by starting their own off-campus fraternity.

• Also Credited As:
  Juliette L. Lewis
• Born:
  on 06/21/1973 in Los Angeles, California
• Job Titles:
  Actor, Producer

Family

• Brother: Lightfield Lewis. born in 1970; feature directorial debut, “The Audition”, starred Juliette Lewis
• Father: Geoffrey Lewis. played bartender on TV series “Flo” (CBS); frequently appeared in Westerns and Clint Eastwood films (”High Plains Drifter” 1973, “Any Which Way You Can” 1980, “Pink Cadillac” 1989); divorced from Glenis Batley when Juliette Lewis was two
• Half-brother: Peter Lewis.
• Half-sister: Dierdre Lewis.
• Mother: Glenis Batley. divorced when Juliette Lewis was two
• Sister: Brandy Lewis. born in 1975; married with two daughters; works as Lewis’ personal assistant

Significant Others

• Companion: Brad Pitt. co-starred in TV-movie, “Too Young to Die?” (1990); dated c. September 1989 to February 1993
• Husband: Steve Berrea. born c. 1972; married on September 9. 1999
• Companion: Brad Pitt. co-starred in TV-movie, “Too Young to Die?” (1990); dated c. September 1989 to February 1993

Milestones

• 1980 Appeared uncredited in Clint Eastwood’s “Bronco Billy”
• 1983 Went to live with father at age 10 (date approximate)
• 1987 Was a series regular on the ABC sitcom “I Married Dora”, starring Elizabeth Pena
• 1987 Appeared in first leading role in Showtime miniseries, “Homefires”
• 1987 Petitioned court at age 14 to become legally “emancipated” (so that she would be exempt from laws that limit child actors to five hours of work on school days)
• 1989 Feature debut, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”
• 1990 Acted with Brad Pitt in the TV-movie “Too Young to Die?” (NBC)
• 1990 Returned as series regular in “A Family For Joe” (NBC), starring Robert Mitchum
• 1991 Breakthrough feature role as Nick Nolte’s daughter in Martin Scorsese’s “Cape Fear”; earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress
• 1992 First leading role in a feature, “That Night”
• 1992 Portrayed Gary Oldman’s peroxide blonde moll in “Romeo Is Bleeding”
• 1992 Replaced Emily Lloyd in Woody Allen’s ensemble feature “Husbands and Wives” after shooting had begun
• 1993 Acted with Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio in the offbeat “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”
• 1993 Reteamed with Pitt for “Kalifornia”, delivering a harrowing portrait as his childlike, clueless trailer trash girlfriend
• 1994 Paired with Woody Harrelson as two love-thugs terrorizing the Southwest in Oliver Stone’s controversial “Natural Born Killers”
• 1995 Found an authentic note as a scuzzy hooker in “Basketball Diaries”, starring DiCaprio
• 1996 In a case of life mirroring art (she was playing a substance abuser in “The Evening Star”), Lewis hit rock bottom after a seven-year slide into drug addiction; had wanted to pull out of movie before it started, but the producers threatened to sue
• 1996 Produced and starred in brother Lightfield Lewis’ “The Audition”
• 1998 Played unsympathetic best friend in “Some Girls”, acting for the first time with Giovanni Ribisi
• 1999 Portrayed mentally-challenged female coming of age sexually in Garry Marshall’s “The Other Sister”, reteaming with Ribisi
• 2002 Co-starred with Jennifer Lopez in the thriller “Enough”
• 2002 Starred opposite Uma Thurman in “Hysterical Blindness” (HBO); although produced for cable TV, screened at Sundance
• 2003 Cast as Heidi in the hilarious comedy feature “Old School”
• 2003 Received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Miniseries Or A Movie for her role in “Hysterical Blindness”
• 2004 Featured in the big screen adaption of the 70’s cop series “Starsky & Hutch”
• 2006 Made London stage debut as the heroine of Sam Shepard’s classic play “Fool For Love”
• Left father’s home at age 15, moving in with family friend Karen Black

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Biographies, Juliette Lewis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.