Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Hope Davis

 
AnswerNote: Hope Davis
Davis, Hope
Source

Actress Hope Davis was born March 23, 1964, in Tenafly, NJ. A childhood friend and neighbor of Mira Sorvino's, the two got their theatrical start when they would write plays and perform them for their friends and families. Davis went on to Vassar College, graduating in 1986, and began her stage career in earnest in Chicago, where she took over Madonna's role in the Chicago production of Speed the Plow, to great acclaim. She also appeared in numerous productions at the prestigious Goodman Theatre, including The Iceman Cometh and Macbeth. While she was in Chicago, Davis made her screen debut, playing Billy Baldwin's girlfriend in Flatliners and as a French ticket agent in Home Alone (1990).

Returning to New York, Davis became a critics' darling for her stage work, particularly in two plays by Nicky Silver: Pterodactyls (1993) and The Food Chain (1995). She continued to act on stage in such productions as Broadway's Two Shakespearean Actors, Ivanov and Spinning Into Butter. Small roles in films like Kiss of Death, Mr. Wrong, and Guy led to her first leading role, as a suburban woman who suspects that her husband is cheating on her in The Daytrippers (1996).

In 1997, Davis was cast in the movie Next Stop Wonderland, and in the family drama, The Myth of Fingerprints. She worked with Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott in their movies, The Impostors (1998) and Joe Gould's Secret (2000), and performed in increasingly visible roles in Mumford (1999), Arlington Road (1999), and Hearts in Atlantis (2001). She appeared as Jack Nicholson's daugher, Jeannie Shmidt, in About Schmidt and in The Secret Lives of Dentists, both made in 2002.

Davis's stellar performance as "Joyce Pekar", the neurotic wife of an underground comic book artist, in American Splendor brought her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 2004. She went on to make Shadows, Proof, The Weather Man and Synecdoche, New York, among other movies, and has an ongoing role in HBO's In Treatment.

Davis is married to actor Jon Patrick Walker, and they have two children.

Last updated: January 14, 2009.

Search unanswered questions...
Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics
Actor: Hope Davis
Top
  • Born: Mar 23, 1964 in Englewood, New Jersey
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: '90s-2000s
  • Major Genres: Comedy Drama, Drama
  • Career Highlights: The Daytrippers, Mumford, Arlington Road
  • First Major Screen Credit: The Daytrippers (1996)

Biography

Displaying a sort of weary Botticelli beauty and a crisp brand of intelligence, Hope Davis has made a name for herself portraying good women wronged by bad men. Playing such characters in her two breakthrough films, The Daytrippers and Next Stop Wonderland, Davis displayed a remarkable blend of lovable bitterness and cynical charm, endearing herself to legions of art house filmgoers who recognized an unmistakable ring of truth in her performances.

Born in Englewood, NJ, Davis had a childhood that was notable in part for her friendship with her neighbor across the street, Mira Sorvino. Davis' first brush with acting came when the two girls -- then eight or nine -- wrote a play and performed it for their neighbors. The actress' next encounter with fame came some years later, in the rather dubious form of her bit part as one of Billy Baldwin's used-and-abused girlfriends in the 1990 film Flatliners. Following a bit role as a French ticket agent in the same year's Home Alone, Davis had yet another dubious brush with fame in Kiss of Death (1995), in a role memorable for the sole reason that it required Davis to be bench-pressed by co-star Nicolas Cage.

The following year brought with it more auspicious work in The Daytrippers, an independent comedy in which Davis played the suspicious wife of philandering Stanley Tucci. Co-starring Parker Posey, Liev Schreiber, and Anne Meara, the film was a hit on the independent circuit and Davis was next seen in Michael Lindsay-Hogg's Guy, another small yet critically acclaimed venture. After a bit part in the Ellen DeGeneres flop Mr. Wrong (also 1996), Davis had a substantial role in Bart Freundlich's 1997 drama The Myth of Fingerprints. Despite a stellar cast, including Blythe Danner, Noah Wyle, Julianne Moore, and Roy Scheider, the film did almost no box office and met with very mixed reviews. Davis followed it with another independent feature, The Impostors (1998), which was directed, written, produced, and starred in by her Daytrippers co-star Stanley Tucci. Unfortunately, like Fingerprints, the film was a relative failure despite an excellent cast and strong director. However, Davis subsequently struck indie gold that same year with her starring role in Brad Anderson's Next Stop Wonderland. Critics drooled over her performance as Erin, a nurse recovering from a major -- and bitterly hilarious -- breakup with her activist boyfriend (played with joyful loathsomeness by Philip Seymour Hoffman). The actress managed to make a potentially cold and unsympathetic character into someone the audience could relate to and support, an achievement that Hollywood chose to reward by placing her in a substantial role in the 1999 Jeff Bridges/Tim Robbins thriller Arlington Road. She gained additional exposure that year in Mumford, Lawrence Kasdan's loopy comedy about a small-town psychiatrist with a past. A few more small films followed (most notable among them was Stanley Tucci's Joe Gould's Secret) before Davis was cast as Jack Nicholson's estranged daughter in Alexander Payne's About Schmidt in 2002. Despite some unfavorable reviews, the film was a relative success, and a high-profile one at that, thanks to Nicholson's Best Actor Oscar nomination. Davis followed her turn in that film with a stellar performance in American Splendor (2003), Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's part-documentary, part-feature film about the underground comic book artist Harvey Pekar, played onscreen by Paul Giamatti. Cast as Pekar's wife, the highly neurotic Joyce, Davis pulled off a skillful performance that managed to prevent Joyce's quirks from disintegrating into caricature, and was undoubtedly one of the reasons that American Splendor won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Sundance Festival. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
Wikipedia: Hope Davis
Top
Hope Davis
Born March 23, 1964 (1964-03-23) (age 45)
Englewood, New Jersey, U.S.

Hope Davis (born March 23, 1964) is an American actress. She has starred in more than 20 feature films, including About Schmidt, Flatliners, Mumford, American Splendor, The Lodger and Next Stop Wonderland.

Contents

Personal life

Davis, second of three children, was born in Englewood, New Jersey, the daughter of Joan, a librarian, and William Davis, an engineer.[1] Davis has described her mother as a "great storyteller" who would take Davis and her siblings to museums or to "something cultural" every Sunday after church.[2][3] Davis graduated in 1982 from Tenafly High School in Tenafly, New Jersey,[4] and was a childhood friend of Mira Sorvino, with whom she wrote and acted in backyard plays.

She is married to actor Jon Patrick Walker. They have two children, Georgia (born August 31, 2002) and Mae (born December 30, 2004).

Career

Film

Davis majored in cognitive science at Vassar College, but then made her debut as a dramatic actress in the 1991 #1 hit "Flatliners," starring as William Baldwin's finace. Later, she became the queen of a certain type of independent film such as The Daytrippers (1995) and Next Stop Wonderland (1998). These led her to roles in Hollywood films such as the thriller Arlington Road (1999), and About Schmidt (2002). In 2003, she starred opposite Paul Giamatti in the movie adaptation of the Harvey Pekar comic American Splendor as the comic book version of Pekar's real-life wife, Joyce Brabner. For this role, Davis won the New York Film Critics Circle award and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. In 2009, she will play Hillary Rodham Clinton in the HBO film The Special Relationship.[5]

Stage

Her major stage debut came after she starred for Joel Schmacher (her "Flatliners" director) in the David Mamet play "Speed the Plow" with William Petersen ("CSI") at the Remains Theater in Chicago in 1992. Later, she had lead roles in the New York premiere of Rebecca Gilman's Spinning into Butter in 2000, and in the 2005 audio play "Hope Leaves the Theater", written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. This was a segment of the sound-only production Theater of the New Ear, which debuted at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY. The title actually refers to Hope Davis's character "leaving the theater."

She returned to the stage in 2009, appearing in Broadway's God of Carnage with Marcia Gay Harden, James Gandolfini and Jeff Daniels[6], a role which gained her a Tony Award nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Play

Television

Davis is co-starring as the bitter and self-deprecating "Mia" with Golden Globe winner Gabriel Byrne in the second season (2009) of HBO's In Treatment, a dramatic series that tracks the backstory and progress of five patients during their series of psychological therapeutic sessions. Mia is a successful, unmarried malpractice attorney who returns to therapy with Dr. Paul Weston after a 20-year absence because of a lack of stability in her personal life.

Davis also starred in an NBC short-lived drama series called Deadline with actor Oliver Platt in 2001. She played the ex-wife to Platt's character at a newspaper giant.

Filmography

References

External links


 
 

 

Copyrights:

Answers Corporation AnswerNote. © 1999-2009 by Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Actor. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hope Davis" Read more

 

Mentioned in