Celebrity Clients and Friends of Marc Weiss Catering

ROSANNA ARQUETTE

ACTRESS

"PULP FICTION", "CRASH",

"DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN"

        Petite, quirky lead with a winsome sensuality and distinctive overbite who after playing adolescents in several high-profile TV-movies in the late 1970s, came into her own starring in several offbeat, independent films of the 1980s. Hailing from a bohemian showbiz clan, Arquette is the granddaughter of TV humorist Cliff Arquette ("Charley Weaver" of radio and "Hollywood Squares" fame) and daughter of actor Lewis Arquette. She is the elder sister of actors Patricia, Alexis, and David Arquette. Arquette established herself in features playing slightly spacey women often torn between the desire for adventure and a concern for social convention.

Arquette was living with her family in an artists' commune in Front Royal, Virginia when she decided, at age 15, to hitchhike cross-country to San Francisco with three friends. There she worked at Renaissance and Dickens fairs before making her professional stage debut in 1975 in "Metamorphosis" at the Story Theater in LA. 1979 marked both her film debut, a walk-on as a "Commune Girl" in "More American Graffiti", and her first stint as a TV regular, playing the teenaged daughter of Shirley Jones on the comedy-drama "Shirley" (NBC, 1979-80). Arquette worked regularly in TV for a period, appearing in after school specials,[FrontPage Image Map Component] PBS dramas, and several notable telefilms including "The Executioner's Song" (NBC, 1982) wherein she received enthusiastic notices for her portrayal of the wild girlfriend of convicted killer Gary Gilmore (Tommy Lee Jones).

Arquette shone in her debut as a film lead in John Sayles' "Baby, It's You" (1983) playing a studious Jewish highschooler who falls for a rebellious Italian boy. She remains best known as the star in the character comedy "Desperately Seeking Susan" (1985), as a bored suburban housewife who adopts the freewheeling lifestyle of Madonna's character whom she encountered in the personal ads. While this part seemed a perfect springboard to major stardom for the young actress, the major beneficiary of this showcase was actually Madonna. Later that same year, Arquette was fine as the unstable fatalistic date of Griffin Dunne who acts as the catalyst for the nightmarish events of Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" (1985). Most of her later roles would fail to live up to her early promise.

The pattern for much of Arquette's subsequent Hollywood career would soon be established: leads in small independent films--usually comedies--and foreign features (The Big Blue 1988); female leads in male-oriented action outings (Silverado 1985); and starring roles in films that were barely released or banished straight-to-video ("The Linguine Incident" 1991). There were some bright spots including a co-starring role as a young artist opposite a shambling master painter (Nick Nolte) in Scorsese's "Life Lessons" segment of "New York Stories" (1989) and an outstanding performance as a traveling clairvoyant in Mike Hodges' stylish made for cable thriller "Black Rainbow" (1989).

One explanation for Arquette's fall from prominence in the late 80s and early 90s was her decision to live and work in Europe for six years during what could have been her Hollywood prime. She returned to the hurlyburly with an unlikely role opposite action star Jean-Claude Van Damme in "Nowhere to Run" (1993). Arquette was in much better company as part of the high octane ensemble in Quentin Tarantino's acclaimed "Pulp Fiction" (1994) and landed one of the female leads in David Cronenberg's controversial "Crash" (1996)

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