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Anjelica Huston

Anjelica Huston has a gift for making composure feel dangerous. Across comedies, crime films, literary adaptations and family fantasies, she has repeatedly played women who command the room without needing to raise their voices. Her measured delivery, imposing stillness and dry sense of amusement can suggest warmth, menace or both at once. Born in Santa Monica on July 8, 1951, Huston grew up in a filmmaking family: her father was director and actor John Huston, while her grandfather was actor Walter Huston. Much of her childhood was spent in Ireland, a place she has continued to consider home. Before concentrating on acting, she worked as a model in Europe during the early 1970s. Her screen debut came in John Huston's A Walk with Love and Death, but Prizzi's Honor marked her major breakthrough. Playing Maerose Prizzi, she brought dark wit and emotional calculation to the Mafia comedy and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Further Oscar nominations followed for Enemies, A Love Story and The Grifters, the latter giving Huston a particularly hard-edged role as veteran con artist Lilly Dillon. Her range is neatly captured by two defining performances from the early 1990s. In The Witches, she embraced the theatrical wickedness of the Grand High Witch; in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, she made Morticia Addams stern, elegant and quietly affectionate. Later roles included the cruel Baroness Rodmilla in Ever After and three collaborations with Wes Anderson: The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited. Huston has also directed for the screen. Her first directing project was Bastard Out of Carolina, followed by Agnes Browne, in which she also starred, and Riding the Bus with My Sister. More recent work has included John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, where her controlled authority found another fitting outlet. Whether playing a matriarch, a schemer or a storybook villain, Huston understands the value of restraint—and exactly when to break it.