Rosanna Arquette is still best known for her early film roles in 1985's Desperately Seeking Susan (co-starring Madonna) and After Hours (directed by Martin Scorsese), even though she has appeared on screen regularly since her debut in the late 1970s. She frequently appears in independently made films and is known for offbeat characters and a distinctive overbite. Her notable film appearances include Baby, It's You (1983), Pulp Fiction (1994, directed by Quentin Tarantino) and Crash (1996, based on the novel by J. G. Ballard). In 2002 she directed a documentary, Searching For Debra Winger, featuring interviews with movie stars such as Jane Fonda, Gwyneth Paltrow and Daryl Hannah.
Arquette comes from a family of actors, including her grandfather Cliff Arquette ("Charley Weaver" on the old Hollywood Squares TV show) and her siblings David, Patricia and Alexis... She's the "Rosanna," of the 1983 Toto song that won a Grammy for Record of the Year.
Career Highlights: The Executioner's Song, Desperately Seeking Susan, The Big Blue
First Major Screen Credit: The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978)
Biography
Born into a show-biz family that includes her grandfather, Cliff Arquette, father, Lewis Arquette, and siblings, David, Patricia, and Alexis Arquette, offbeat leading actress Rosanna Arquette worked as a teen in television movies through the '70s and the early '80s, but she didn't become a real star until her role in Susan Seidelman's sleeper Desperately Seeking Susan (1985). Though her part seemed to promise a bright future for the talented and beautiful actress, she has since been more or less relegated to supporting roles and co-leads.
Born in Manhattan on August 10, 1959, Arquette moved about frequently with her family while she was growing up. She made her acting debut in Los Angeles at the age of 17 in a theatrical production of Metamorphosis, and she continued acting in local plays when her family relocated to Virginia. After an audience with a casting director, Arquette began appearing on television, and she made her feature-film debut in More American Graffiti in 1979. She had her first starring role in John Sayles' 1983 romantic drama Baby It's You, playing an overachieving Jewish girl who falls in love with an Italian hunk (Vincent Spano). Though she has subsequently been typecast as kooky but sexy women, early in her career, Arquette demonstrated considerable dramatic ability in The Executioner's Song (1982), the television biopic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore which was later released theatrically.
Arquette has spent much of her subsequent career popping up in a number of diverse films, including Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994), which featured her in a brief but pivotal role as a junkie; David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), in which she all-too memorably allowed James Spader to have sex with her gaping leg wound; Buffalo '66 (1998), which cast her as the protagonist's trampy high school dream girl; Alison Anders and Kurt Voss' Sugar Town (1999), in which she played an actress and one-time sex symbol; and The Whole Nine Yards (2000), a comedy that cast her as the suburban neighbor of a mobster (Bruce Willis) trying to make good. If subsequent roles didn't necessarrily advance her career as much as longtime followers had hoped, Arquette nevertheless remained busy onscreen with a series of low-profile independent efforts intercut with the occasional mainstream feature. Her headlining role as an ageing virgin who's first act of intimacy shakes the foundation of a small Illinois commuity (2000's Too Much Flesh) may have never reached US shores for distribution, though a memorable performance in Allison Anders' redemption-themed drama Things Behind the Sun the following year offered the longtime actress a dramatic role that stateside audiences could access. Thouse who did actually see the David Spade comedy Joe Dirt (2001) were offered a brief but memorable comedic performance by Arquette, in addition to her four other roles that year alone the actress turned in a heartfelt performance as a woman struggling with her compulsive sexuality in Diary of a Sex Addict. After turning up in the made for television drama Rush of Fear in 2003, Arquette could once again be seen on the big screen in the comedy drama Max and Grace. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
In 1963, Arquette's family moved to Chicago, where her father managed The Second City theater for several years. When she was eleven years old, her parents moved to a commune in Front Royal, Virginia. Arquette did not do well at school. In 1974, she hitchhiked across the country with three older teenagers, eventually going to San Francisco, where she worked at renaissance and Dickens fairs. Her professional theater debut was May 27, 1977, appearing in the Story Theatre Musical production of Ovid's The Metamorphoses at the Callboard Theatre on Melrose Place in Los Angeles.
Career
Besides films, Arquette appeared from the beginning of her career in television films. In 1982, she earned an Emmy Award nomination for the TV filmThe Executioner's Song. Thereafter, she played in many cinema movies and TV films and has worked with many of the most acclaimed film directors of the last twenty years. Arquette's first starring role was in John Sayles's Baby It's You, a highly regarded but little seen film. She starred in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) alongside pop singer Madonna. Following the commercial and critical failure of both After Hours and 8 Million Ways to Die, she quit Hollywood to work in Europe.
In 1989, Scorsese offered her a part in New York Stories. Since then, Arquette has appeared, with few exceptions, in one or in several movies each year, some of them of notable interest, like Pulp Fiction and the David Cronenberg film, Crash. An offbeat choice, however, was to fly downunder and make the Australian film Wendy Cracked a Walnut (1990) (also known as …Almost). An expensive film, and a huge box office flop, only the musical score by Bruce Smeaton was generally noted by critics, for its musical innovation. In 1990, Arquette appeared on the cover and in a nude pictorial in Playboy's September issue, although she claimed it was without her prior knowledge or consent.[7]
In recent years, Arquette has also been expanding into direction. Recent films which she has directed include the documentaries Searching for Debra Winger (2002) and All We Are Saying (2005); she also produced both projects.[8]
Rosanna joins Fit Parent Magazine [9] as Associate Publisher / Editor at Large Los Angeles.
Personal life
Arquette was 19 when she married director/composer Tony Greco; they divorced in October 1980. Arquette briefly dated Toto member Steve Porcaro; the band's Grammy Award-winning single "Rosanna", the lead track on the album Toto IV, was named after her, but the song itself was not about her, according to writer David Paich.[10] In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, Arquette said that she used to bring the band "juice and beer" at all hours of the night during their recording sessions.
Her 1986 marriage to composer James Newton Howard also ended in divorce. English pop and rock star Peter Gabriel recorded the hit "In Your Eyes" inspired by a brief reconciliation with the actress. Arquette married restaurateur John Sidel in 1993. One year later their daughter, Zoe Blue Sidel, was born. Arquette went on working intensively, which meant she was often away from home. The couple divorced in 1999. Arquette became engaged to entertainment executive, David Codikow, in September 2001.[citation needed] Arquette promotes awareness of breast cancer, while continuing with her work as a director. Her mother died of breast cancer in 1997. In 2002 her critically acclaimed documentary Searching for Debra Winger was released. In the film, Arquette interviews prominent and respected actresses (mostly between the ages of 30 and 60) to explore the practicalities for a working actress to successfully maintain a family.
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