Embeth Davidtz Biography

Embeth Jean Davidtz (born January 1, 1966 in Lafayette, Indiana) is an American actress. Davidtz moved to South Africa when she was a young child.

She returned to the United States as an adult and began her career as an actress. She married Jason Sloane on June 22, 2002.
Dark-haired American-born beauty Embeth Davidtz was raised and educated in South Africa where she performed classical and contemporary drama in both English and Afrikaans.
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She made her professional acting debut at age 21 playing Juliet in a National Theatre Company production of "Romeo and Juliet", which won her rave reviews. Having twice earned the South African equivalent of a Tony nomination for her theater work, Davidtz distinguished herself in the politically sensitive South African feature "A Private Life" (1989), as the daughter of an interracial couple, and garnered a South African "Oscar" nomination playing a deaf-mute in the psychologically intense Afrikaner feature "Night of the Nineteenth.”

Davidtz moved to Los Angeles in 1991 and promptly landed major roles in TV projects, including the movie "Til Death Us Do Part" (NBC, 1992) with Arliss Howard and Treat Williams, and the crime drama miniseries "Deadly Matrimony" (NBC, 1992) with Williams and Brian Dennehy. Her first released American film was Sam Raimi's third "Evil Dead" movie, "Army of Darkness" (1993), in which she played the female lead as the lovely maiden Sheila and her demonic alter ego. Davidtz generated a lot of favorable press with her poignant portrayal of Helen Hirsch, the brutalized Jewish maid, in Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" (1993), winning the role after the director serendipitously caught her performance in a TV-movie.

Though she would later admit to being unhappy with the project, Davidtz had a high-profile leading role in the fact-based film "Murder in the First" (1995) but better displayed her versatility in the Merchant/Ivory production "Feast of July" (also 1995); she garnered glowing critical praise for her deft portrayal of a young woman who, in searching for the lover who abandoned her, ultimately brings tragedy to the family that offered her refuge.

More redeeming was her character in "Matilda" (1996), a feature based on Roald Dahl's children's fantasy. Here she essayed the role of the aptly-named Miss Honey, a sweet, warm-hearted teacher who brings out the best in the titular neglected girl genius. In 1998, Davidtz played a theologian helping Denzel Washington crack a supernatural wave of crimes in the mystery drama "Fallen" and played a femme fatale linked to Kenneth Branagh in Robert Altman's take on the John Grisham novel "The Gingerbread Man". The following year, Davidtz brought a witty charm to her portrayal a 19th-century woman of the world in Patricia Rozema's reworking of the Jane Austen comedy "Mansfield Park" and played a dual role in the futuristic fable "Bicentennial Man.”

A supporting role in the film adaptation of "Bridget Jones's Diary" (2001) saw Davidtz play a haughty villain for a change, while she proved even greater adaptability that year as she began her run on the CBS drama "Citizen Baines", playing the daughter of a defeated United States Senate incumbent (James Cromwell) who is herself leaning towards a career in politics. Mixing up period dramas (1999's "Wayward Son" and the 2001-lensed "Secret Passage") with horror thrillers like 2001's "Thir13en Ghosts", Davidtz emerged as a skilled performer with varied and versatile strengths. In 2002, he was then cast in the Michael Hoffman drama, "The Emperor's Club," a movie which co-starred Kevin Kline as a professor and Emile Hirsch as a headstrong student.

In “Junebug” (2005), an entrancing and beautifully acted drama, Davidtz played an outsider art dealer from Chicago brought to North Carolina by her husband (Alessandro Nivola) to meet his family for the first time. His eccentric family—which boasts of his knotty mother (Celia Weston), laconic father (Scott Wilson), cranky brother (Benjamin McKenzie) and awe-struck sister-in-law (Amy Adams)—becomes easily fractured from his wife’s presence, exposing long-dormant frustrations and anxieties.

EMBETH DAVIDTZ PICTURES

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EMBETH DAVIDTZ BIOGRAPHY