Jennifer Jason Leigh

Born: 5 February 1962
Where: Hollywood, California

The actress chilled a generation of cinemagoers as the flatmate-from-hell in the 1992 thriller Single White Female.

Other notable roles include Kathy Bates' daughter in Dolores Claiborne as well as a appearances in Last Exit To Brooklyn and Palindromes.

The daughter of actor Vic Morrow and screenwriter Barbara Turner, she had her first (non-speaking) role aged nine in the movie Death of the Stranger in 1973.

She first gained attention as an anorexic teenager in the TV movie The Best Little Girl in the World, then made her feature film mark as a young girl who gets an abortion in the teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

In 1983, he father died in an accident on set during filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie.

Despite an appearance in cult hit The Hitcher, it was eight years before Leigh's next notable part, as a prostitute in the gritty drama Last Exit to Brooklyn.

She played Bridget Fonda's psychotic roommate in Single White Female, and followed with the small role of a woman who works as a phone sex operator from her home in Robert Altman's Short Cuts.

Following her appearance in the Coen brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy, Leigh again displayed her versatility, first in Dolores Claiborne as the title character's haunted daughter and then as a drug-addicted singer wannabe in Georgia.

Leigh ventured into lighter territory in 1997 playing a heroine who falls in love with a golddigger in the film version of Henry James' Washington Square.

In 1999, she took on the role of performer Sally Bowles in the Broadway revival of Cabaret opposite Alan Cumming.

The part not only proved she was a compelling presence on stage, but also showed she was an adequate singer and dancer as well.

She played a computer game designer in sci-fi drama eXistenZ opposite Jude Law, then acted in the fourth Dogme 95 film, The King Is Alive, about a group of passengers on a broken down bus who pass the time by staging "King Lear".

Leigh then took on an ambitious project with friend Cumming, writing, directing, producing and starring in the comedy-drama The Anniversary Party.

She went back to her acting full time, appearing in Road to Perdition with Tom Hanks and In the Cut with Meg Ryan.

In 2005, she played a hooker opposite Christian Bale in the sci-fi thriller The Machinist and starred in the psychological drama The Jacket.

Recent work includes the tabloid comedy drama Rag Tale alongside Rupert Graves.