Patricia Arquette

Patricia Arquette was born April 8, 1968, in Chicago, Illinois. The senior Arquettes were performers and artists of one sort or another. Grandfather Cliff was a humorist, known for his persona of Charley Weaver, who frequently appeared on TV's Hollywood Squares and talk shows during the 1960s and '70s. Father Lewis (a.k.a. Mursulin Arquette) was also an actor and humorist, while mother Mardi (a.k.a. Olivia/Brenda/Mardiningshi) was a poet and political activist. The family, which also included older siblings Rosanna and Richmond, and younger brothers Alexis and David, moved to an artists' commune near Arlington, Virginia when Patricia was still a child. Not surprisingly, the Arquette children grew up in an environment that fostered creativity and freedom of expression. When Patricia was 15, she ran away to live with Rosanna, who had moved to L.A. to pursue an acting career. After several years on the commune, the rest of the family relocated to Southern California, and soon all the children became interested in acting.

The following year included a starring role in John Boorman's Beyond Rangoon and a marriage to actor Nicolas Cage. In 1996, Arquette had lead roles in a number of films, most notably David O. Russell's Flirting With Disaster, in which she played Ben Stiller's put-upon wife. She then switched gears with starring roles in David Lynch's Lost Highway and the thriller Nightwatch. She tried her hand at a Western in 1998, playing the object of Woody Harrelson's and Billy Crudup's desires in Stephen Frears' The Hi-Lo Country. Despite an interesting premise and excellent cast, the film flopped, but Arquette continued to work steadily the following year, with lead roles in the black comedy Goodbye Lover; Stigmata, in which she starred opposite Gabriel Byrne as the unwitting target of a supernatural phenomenon; and Martin Scorsese's Bringing out the Dead, a film starring Arquette's then-husband Cage as a burnt-out paramedic.

Following the weightiness of the creepy Stigmata and the disturbing Bringing Out the Dead, Arquette took things in a decidedly lighter direction with her next two projects. In 2000, she played Adam Sandler's love-interest in the comedy Little Nicky, while the following year found her opposite Tim Robbins in the off-the-wall Human Nature. Written by Being John Malkovich scribe Charlie Kaufman, Human Nature was the feature debut from acclaimed music-video director Michel Gondry and featured Arquette as a woman cursed with a coat of fur covering her body.

As the decade progressed, audiences could see Arquette in projects ranging from the star-studded documentary Searching for Debra Winger to the sleeper family film Holes.