Patricia Arquette
About
Biography
Filmography
Family & Companions
Biography
The youngest daughter of a performing family including brother David Arquette and sister Rosanna Arquette, vivacious and vulnerable Patricia Arquette rose through the 1990s independent film world to become a leading player for directors like Tim Burton, David Lynch and Sean Penn. Her breakthrough role in Tony Scott's crime spree "True Romance" (1993) led to more risky but stylish fare, including "Lost Highway" (1997) and "Stigmata" (1999), but the actress also proved her widespread appeal with mainstream dramas like Martin Scorsese's "Bringing Out the Dead" (1999) and comedies like "Little Nicky" (2000). The actress also endured a tabloid fascination with her love life after dating Christian Slater and marrying and divorcing Nicholas Cage. In 2005, Arquette made an unlikely leap to series television with resounding success, due to her portrayal of a hectic working mom who also happens to be a gifted psychic on the long-running procedural, "Medium" (NBC/CBS, 2005-2011), which earned the actress an Emmy Award, as well as mainstream success. Though she appeared in only one film during her seven seasons on "Medium," Arquette was poised for a big screen comeback once "Medium" finally ended, and ended up winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work on Richard Linklater's unique family drama "Boyhood" (2014).
Patricia Arquette was born on April 8, 1968, though she first gained attention while she was still in the womb. Family lore stated that while participating in a Civil Rights march that spring, Martin Luther King Jr. spotted weighty mom-to-be Mardi Arquette and insisted she ride on the bus with him. Mardi made it back home to Chicago in time for Arquette's birth, and there she joined siblings Rosanna, Richmond, and Robert (future transgender performer Alexis). Dad Lewis was a player with the Second City improv group and had earlier been a member of the influential San Francisco comedy group The Committee. His father Cliff Arquette was popularly known as Charley Weaver on dozens of TV shows during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1970, the peace-loving Arquette family moved to a spiritual-based commune near Arlington, VA, where youngest brother David was added to the family and all the kids could live surrounded by nature and far from materialism and mass media.
The hippie kids were in for a bit of culture shock in 1974 when the Utopian experiment ended and the Arquettes relocated to Los Angeles. Dad Lewis began a steady career on TV including a long-running role on "The Waltons" (CBS, 1972-1981) and mom Mardi ran a children's theater workshop. Her own children were beginning to show a flair for performing, with Rosanna training on stages in San Francisco before landing film roles, and brother Robert embarking on a small screen career of his own. Arquette attended arts-oriented magnet schools in Los Angeles, running away from home at age 14 to live with older sister Rosanna, but honing in on acting and training with renowned drama coach Milton Katselas. At 18, she landed her first role in the teen genre picture, "Pretty Smart" (1986), and by the following year, she was pregnant with a son.
Arquette certainly had a lot of perspective to bring to the role of a teenage mother in the TV movie "Daddy" (ABC, 1987), following that up with a solid run of appearances that belied her busy schedule as a single mom. She landed a starring role in "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors" (1987) and a string of credits as "offbeat" teens in "Time Out" (1988) and Sam Shepard's "Far North" (1988), as well as various TV spots. She had the distinction of starring in two small screen projects directed by Diane Keaton: a CBS Schoolbreak Special entitled "The Boy With the Crazy Brother" (1990) and the long form, "Wildflower" (Lifetime, 1991). In the latter, the actress essayed the demanding role of a young girl with epilepsy, whose stepfather keeps her locked up and believing she is possessed by demons. The newcomer earned a CableACE award for the performance, which tapped the actress' flair for fragile vulnerability and the honest quality that was soon in demand by distinguished film directors.
It was just these qualities that inspired first time director Sean Penn to cast Arquette as the tender girlfriend of Viggo Mortensen in "The Indian Runner" (1991). She likewise delivered a heartrending Mattie Silver, the life force in the otherwise bleak Wharton adaptation "Ethan Frome" (1993). Arquette's breakout performance came later that year when she more than held her own alongside heavy-hitters Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper in the Quentin Tarantino-scripted "True Romance." The much-hyped film also showcased another side of the actress - that she could convincingly beat a man to death in her underwear. Tim Burton tread lightly on the potential for jarring weirdness by casting her as the tolerant wife of eccentric filmmaker "Ed Wood" (1994) in his black & white biopic on the deficient film director. The following year, Arquette was a surprising but effective choice to play the lead of an American doctor caught up in the political turmoil of Burma in John Boorman's "Beyond Rangoon" (1995).
Arquette's growing status in the independent film world seemed complete with her marriage that year to actor Nicholas Cage, who himself had traversed art house territory on his way to becoming a box office star. The pair had initially met in 1989, with Cage reportedly proposing to Arquette the first time they crossed paths at a Los Angeles deli. The coy actress sent him away with a treasure hunt of items she would require in order to entertain his proposal, including a black orchid, J.D. Salinger's autograph, and a statue from a Big Boy restaurant. Cage fulfilled the conditions, but the pair barely lasted a few dates before going their separate ways. A decade later, they met again by accident - supposedly at the same deli - and decided it had to be fate, tying the knot not long after.
The dramatic actress jumped at the chance to do her first straight-up comedy, starring opposite Ben Stiller as the moody spouse of an adopted man seeking his birth parents in "Flirting With Disaster" (1996). She gave a much subtler dramatic performance opposite Matthew Broderick in "Infinity" (1996), a biopic about Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. While she earned some praise from reviewers for her dual turn as the murdered wife of a jazz musician and a blonde femme fatale in David Lynch's "Lost Highway" (1997), the overall film was generally critiqued for being overly confusing and pretentious. Arquette undertook a similar vixenish type in Stephen Frears' "The Hi-Lo Country" (1998), playing the unhappily married ranch wife who embarks on an affair with a rival cattleman. Taking a darker turn, she starred in the supernatural thriller "Stigmata" (1999), which debuted at number one at the box office but stirred controversy for its depiction of the Catholic Church.
Arquette had clearly made a successful transition from independent film to box office notable, next appearing in Martin Scorsese's well-received New York City ambulance drama "Bringing Out the Dead" (1999) with Cage. The working partnership may have put the final strain on the pair's on-again/off-again relationship. They officially split the following year. Not one to lick her wounds, Arquette cut loose in another broad comedy and box office hit, Adam Sandler's son-of-Satan send-up, "Little Nicky" (2000). She rebounded to regain her indie street cred with Michel Gondry's "Human Nature" (2001), tackling a challenging role that required her to appear completely nude but accessorized with piles of fake hair. After appearing as school teacher-turned-outlaw Kissin' Kate Barlow in the offbeat Disney drama, "Holes" (2003), Arquette gave birth to daughter Harlow and settled into family life with fiancé, actor Thomas Jane, who had romantically proposed at the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles.
In 2004, Arquette made a surprising and highly successful shift to series television when she signed on to star as real-life psychic and criminal profiler Allison DuBois in "Medium" (NBC/CBS, 2005-2011). The series proved popular right out of the gate, with Arquette imbuing an appealing earthiness to her characterization of a wife and mother struggling to balance family and crime-solving psychic visions. After less than a dozen episodes of the mid-season replacement had aired, Arquette found herself nominated for Golden Globe and Emmy Awards, subsequently taking home the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. In 2006, she received a second Golden Globe nomination and the following year Arquette was again honored with both Golden Globe and Emmy nods for her role on the supernatural hit. After the series left NBC for CBS, Arquette continued to receive acclaim, earning a nomination at the Screen Actors Guild awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series. After the series wrapped, Arquette next appeared on the big screen in the comedy-drama "Girl In Progress" (2012), Roman Coppola's quirky "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III" (2013) and the comedy "Vijay and I" (2014). She received acclaim for her role as a divorced mother in Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" (2014), which had been filmed over the course of 12 years to capture the growth of the main character (Ellar Coltrane) from the ages of 5 to 18. Her Best Supporting Actress win at the 2015 Academy Awards was marked with a fiery speech demanding pay equality for women, delivered to rousing applause. Shortly after this career high point, Arquette returned to television as the star of the procedural drama "CSI: Cyber" (CBS 2015-16).
By Susan Clarke
Filmography
Cast (Feature Film)
Misc. Crew (Feature Film)
Cast (Special)
Cast (TV Mini-Series)
Life Events
1986
First acting role, "Pretty Smart"
1987
Gained attention for co-starring role in "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors"
1987
Made TV movie debut as a pregnant high school student in "Daddy" (ABC)
1990
Directed by Diane Keaton in "The Girl With the Crazy Brother," a CBS Schoolbreak Special
1991
Cast in featured role as Viggo Mortensen's girlfriend in "The Indian Runner," written and directed by Sean Penn
1991
Re-teamed with director Diane Keaton to play lead role of a girl with epilepsy in the Lifetime movie "Wildflower"
1993
Delivered breakout performance opposite Christian Slater in "True Romance," directed by Tony Scott and written by Quentin Tarantino
1994
Portrayed Kathy O'Hara, girlfriend and eventual wife of "Ed Wood"; film directed by Tim Burton and starred Johnny Depp in title role
1995
Cast in leading role of an American physician who becomes stranded in Burma in "Beyond Rangoon"
1996
Starred opposite Matthew Broderick in his feature directorial debut "Infinity"
1996
Appeared as the wife of Ben Stiller's Mel Coplin in "Flirting With Disaster"
1997
Played dual role of the murdered wife of a jazz musician and a vamp in "Lost Highway"
1998
Played femme fatale Mona in "The Hi-Lo Country"
1999
Collaborated with then-husband Nicolas Cage in Martin Scorsese's "Bringing Out the Dead"
2000
Played the love interest to Adam Sandler in "Little Nicky"
2002
Appeared in documentary "Searching for Debra Winger," about the pressures women face working in the entertainment industry; written and directed by her sister Rosanna Arquette
2002
Co-starred with Tim Robbins in "Human Nature," written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry
2005
Cast as Alison Dubois, a woman who communicates with the dead, on NBC drama "Medium"; earned Golden Globe (2005, 2006, 2007), SAG (2005, 2006, 2009) and Emmy (2007) nominations for Best Actress in a Drama Series
2006
Cast as part of an ensemble in "Fast Food Nation," Richard Linklater's adaptation of Eric Schlosser's non-fiction book
2008
Played the storyteller in "A Single Woman," the biographical story of suffragist Jeannette Rankin
2012
Co-starred with Eva Mendes in comedy-drama "Girl in Progress"
2012
Cast opposite Charlie Sheen in "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III," directed by Roman Coppola
2013
Had recurring role of Sally Wheet on "Boardwalk Empire"
2014
Starred in Richard Linklater's uniquely made family drama "Boyhood"
2015
Co-starred in "The Wannabe"
2015
Starred as Avery Ryan on "CSI: Cyber"
2017
Co-starred with Rainn Wilson in the comedy "Permanent"
2018
Gave a Golden Globe-winning performance as Tilly Mitchell on the mini-series "Escape at Dannemora"
Family
Companions
