Rachel Weisz

Rachel Weisz was born on the 7th of March, 1971, in London. The name is pronounced Vice - she actually considered changing it because she was tired of hearing Wheeze and Wise, but quite rightly thought Vice would make her sound like a porn star. Both her parents are Jewish and were brought to England before WW2 to escape the onrushing Holocaust, starting their new lives with nothing. Father George, from Hungary, became an inventor, most notably of medical devices, including a life-saving respiratory machine. Mother Edith, from Vienna, became a psychoanalyst. Rachel also has a younger sister.

Throughout Rachel's early life, her parents did not get on too well. Both being fiercely intelligent and highly critical, theirs was a fraught relationship. Rachel - perhaps to gain attention, perhaps to give her parents something to unite over - became rebellious, passing through a series of schools due to her "disruptive behaviour". So, she went from North London Collegiate to Benenden to St Paul's. At 13, her parents took her to a shrink to find the root of these outrages. The shrink sent her a letter saying "Congratulations. You are doing very well at keeping your parents together". Nevertheless, by the time she was 15, they'd separated.

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