Jennifer Jason Leigh

Jennifer has been in sooo many movies, but you may not have seen too many of them. She is considered one of the grittiest actors out there, and some of her roles are way out there. To give you an idea of how she chooses roles: Backdraft, directed by Ron Howard, is about firefighters... but Jennifer told Ron the part she wanted was to be the fire! Ouch!

But it's all just an act. "People can have so many ill-conceived ideas about me based on the parts that I play," says Jennifer. "I've had guys, when I've been single, come date me and I've found out they were expecting some kind of whirlwind, some dramatic crazy person-- and that's just not me. I'd much rather be in a movie that people have really strong feelings about than one that makes a hundred million dollars but you can't remember because it's just like all the others."

Two of her latest films were directed by her husband, Jewish film-maker Noah Baumbach, who also directed The Squid and the Whale and wrote The Life Aquatic... so they are on the quirky side. One is Margot at the Wedding, also staring Jack Black, Flora Cross, and Halley Feiffer. The other is Greenberg, in which she falls in love with Ben Stiller, who plays (one guess) Greenberg. Oh, and you can read about Noah in Flora's Bonus.

Another recent project of Jennifer's is Synecdoche, New York. Synecdoche (sin-EK-doe-key) is a poetry term, meaning a part of something that stands for the whole thing. Like "All hands on deck!" or "Fifty head of cattle" mean the whole sailors or cows, not just their hands or heads. This movie is about a guy who builds a whole miniature New York in his barn! It was written by Jewish screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.

Jennifer's most Jewish role has to be that of Jewish comic writer Dorothy Parker, one of the funniest writers in all American literature, in the film Dorothy Parker and the Vicious Circle with Matthew Broderick. A "vicious circle" is when, say, you skip school to catch up on homework, so you didn't pick up today's homework and are still behind! But here it also means a "circle" of friends who were all famous writers and who all make "vicious," mean-but-funny remarks all day.

Jennifer was also in some goofball comedies you might like. She was in Easy Money with the late, great Jewish comic Rodney Dangerfield (Jewish songwriter Billy Joel wrote the title song, too). She did a voice in the Hey Arnold! movie. And she was in The Hudsucker Proxy, a movie about hula hoops (no, really!) directed by the Jewish Coen Brothers.

Her first film was the funny Fast Times at Ridgemont High (a young Sean Penn stole that show!), by Jewish director Amy Heckerling... who also directed Clueless, one of our Movies of the Month!

Jennifer also was in a couple of movies with music as the theme. In Georgia (written by her mom!), she plays a punk rocker who is sisters with Jewish actress Mare Winningham, who plays a country singer. And she is in Kansas City, a movie about jazz. That one was directed by Jewish director Robert Altman (see the Bonus here), and he also used Jennifer in Short Cuts.

Bonus:

Jennifer’s dad was named Vic Morrow, and he also was an actor, and also famous for his tough characters and gritty movies. He joined the Navy in real life, too.

Only a few of Vic’s many movies have stood the test of time. But these include his first, a hard look at a crumbling school, a ladmark film called Blackboard Jungle. Jewish actor Paul Mazursky, later a great writer-director, was in that. Vic made a lot of Westerns, and was in shows like Bonanza (with Lorne Greene; see the Bonus here) and The Rifleman; his greatest Western film was Cimarron.

He was also in the best Elvis movie, King Creole, and in a movie starring kids that is really for adults, the original Little League classic The Bad News Bears (Jewish actor Walter Matthau, who we wrote about in this Bonus, was in both of those!).

Vic’s tough-guy image got him appearances on many crime and spy shows, like The Untouchables (narrated by Jewish radio legend Walter Winchell), Hawaii Five-O, Mannix, Mission: Impossible, Charlie’s Angels and Magnum, PI. His most acclaimed TV show was the miniseries Roots, about American slavery; his longest-running series was Combat! which was set in WWII and ran for five years; and his most Jewish show was Greatest Heroes of the Bible.

Most people don’t know, but Vic made a few movies in French, Italian, Japanese, and Korean! Sadly, he died while filming the movie version of the classic Twilight Zone TV show.

Jennifer's mother is actress Barbara Turner, who was in shows like Ben Casey and The Virginian back in the 1950s and '60s. Later, Barbara turned to screenwriting, and wrote movies like Georgia (for her daughter) . Now, she is returning to acting with the movie Margot at the Wedding (with her daughter!).

Bonus Bonus:

The vicious circle of friends called themselves "The Algonquin Round Table" because they met at a round table at The Algonquin Hotel. Other Jewish members included Harpo Marx of the Marx Brothers, playwright George S. Kaufman, and novelist Edna Ferber.

Dorothy Parker was an American Jewish woman who spoke her mind when most people paid women no mind at all, in the early 20th Century. She was a poet... and a critic who once wrote about a book: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force!"

She also wrote stories, and sometimes screenplays based on them. The most famous is probably A Star is Born, starring Judy Garland.

But perhaps, Dorothy is best remembered for the quips and quotes which revealed a very quick wit. Just search "Dorothy Parker" and "quotes" and you'll see! About life, Dorthoy said: "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

Click here to read Dorothy's amazing story!