31 Facts About Theresa Russell

Theresa Lynn Russell is an American actress whose career spans over four decades.

Theresa Russell's filmography includes over 50 feature films, ranging from mainstream to independent and experimental films.

Theresa Russell subsequently began modeling, which brought her to the attention of film producer Sam Spiegel.

In 1978, Theresa Russell starred opposite Dustin Hoffman in the critically acclaimed crime drama Straight Time.

Theresa Russell's next role was a lead in English filmmaker Nicolas Roeg's controversial thriller Bad Timing, which earned critical praise.

Theresa Russell and Roeg began a romance while shooting the film, and it marked one of six projects they would collaborate on following their 1982 marriage.

Theresa Russell next appeared in Roeg's drama Eureka, followed by the John Byrum-directed The Razor's Edge.

Theresa Russell portrayed Marilyn Monroe in Roeg's experimental alternate history film Insignificance, followed by a lead role as a serial killer in Bob Rafelson's neo-noir film Black Widow, which garnered her significant commercial attention.

Theresa Russell continued to collaborate with Roeg throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, appearing in a Roeg-directed segment of the anthology film Aria, as well as the features Track 29 and Cold Heaven.

Theresa Russell was born in San Diego, California, the eldest of three children to teenage mother Carole Platt and Jerry Theresa Russell Paup.

When she was five years old, Theresa Russell's parents divorced, and her father relocated to Mexico.

Theresa Russell has said she grew up in poverty, and that at times her family required food stamps to survive.

At age 14, while a student at Burbank High School, Theresa Russell was approached while walking on a street in Los Angeles by a photographer who suggested she model.

Theresa Russell subsequently began modeling for a fashion photographer who was a friend of her mother.

Theresa Russell was madly in love with me and took pictures of me a lot.

Theresa Russell would come round and we would go off and shoot pictures up in the mountains.

Theresa Russell said he would see to it that I got no billing in the movie.

Theresa Russell was cast as Milena Flaherty, a young American living in Vienna who enters a dysfunctional relationship with a psychoanalyst in Bad Timing.

Theresa Russell is only 22 or 23, and yet her performance is astonishingly powerful.

Theresa Russell will be in better films, I hope, and is the only participant who need not be ashamed of this one.

Theresa Russell became a muse of Roeg's, and the two were married in February 1982 in Westminster, London.

Theresa Russell then portrayed Marilyn Monroe in Roeg's experimental alternate history film Insignificance, based on the play by Terry Johnson, in which she appeared opposite Gary Busey and Tony Curtis.

In 1987, Theresa Russell gained mainstream exposure for her portrayal of Catharine Peterson, a serial killer who seduces and murders wealthy men in Bob Rafelson's noir thriller Black Widow, co-starring Debra Winger.

The film received largely unfavorable reviews from critics, with some, such as Rita Kempley of The Washington Post, singling out Theresa Russell's acting as a primary fault.

Roger Ebert, who had previously championed many of Theresa Russell's performances, suggested in his review of the film that she and Reynolds merely lacked chemistry.

In 1990, Theresa Russell was cast in Sondra Locke's Impulse, in which she portrayed a police officer who is drawn into the world of prostitution while posing undercover as a prostitute in Los Angeles.

David Ansen of Newsweek felt that Theresa Russell was miscast in her role.

Theresa Russell again united with her husband Roeg for his film Cold Heaven, starring opposite Mark Harmon as a woman whose husband inexplicably rises from the dead.

Theresa Russell was the narrator of the British drama Being Human, starring Robin Williams, followed by the British comedy The Grotesque, opposite Alan Bates and Sting.

Theresa Russell was then cast in the neo-noir thriller Wild Things, playing the mother of Denise Richards's character.

Theresa Russell appeared in the supporting role of Emma Marko in Spider-Man 3 as the wife of Flint Marko.