Mercedes Ruehl

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Mercedes Ruehl

Mercedes Ruehl
Born February 28, 1948
Queens, New York

Mercedes Ruehl (born February 28, 1948) is an Academy Award-winning United States theater and film actress.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Personal life

Ruehl was born in Queens, New York. Her father was an FBI agent and her mother was a teacher. She was raised in the Catholic religion[1] and has German, Irish, and Cuban ancestry.[2] Ruehl attended College of New Rochelle[3] and graduated in 1969. She is married to painter David Geiser,[4] with whom she has a son, Jake. She had another son, Christopher, who she gave up for adoption in the 1970s; Christopher later became Jake's godfather.[5].

[edit] Career

Ruehl began her career in regional theatre, taking odd jobs between engagements. In the late 1970s, Ruehl began chalking up New York stage successes, notably in I'm Not Rappaport (1985). On the stage, she won the 1985 Obie Award for her performance in The Marriage of Bette and Boo and twenty years later, an Obie for Woman Before a Glass. She also received a 1991 Tony Award as Best Actress (Play) for Lost in Yonkers. Her performances in two other plays earned her two other Tony nominations:

Her most acclaimed film role was in The Fisher King; her performance in the film earned her the 1992 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress as well as an American Comedy Award, a Boston Society of Film Critics Award, a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, and a Golden Globe. Earlier she had won the 1989 National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Married to the Mob. She played KACL station manager Kate Costas in five episodes of Frasier, and had a major role in the made-for-TV film All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story.

She has also played the mother of Vincent Chase in HBO's Entourage.

[edit] Filmography

Preceded by
Whoopi Goldberg
for Ghost		 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
1991
for The Fisher King		 Succeeded by
Marisa Tomei
for My Cousin Vinny

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1285/is_n8_v24/ai_15667421
  2. ^ http://www.lasculturas.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=78&Itemid=1
  3. ^ http://www.cnr.edu/CNR/cnr-wealth.html
  4. ^ http://www.artdealers.org/events/forum07t.html
  5. ^ http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800019603/bio

[edit] External links

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