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Jude Law biography

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Quick Facts

  • NAME: David Jude Heyworth Law
  • OCCUPATION: Actor
  • BIRTH DATE: December 29, 1972 (Age: 39)
  • PLACE OF BIRTH: Lewisham, England
  • ZODIAC SIGN: Capricorn

Best Known For

directed British actor Jude Law received an Academy Award nomination for his performance in Cold Mountain. He also played "Gigolo Joe" in Steven Spielberg's film A.I.

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Synopsis

Jude Law was born December 29, 1972 in Lewisham, England. His first several U.S. films met with a less than warm reception. In 1999, his production company, Natural Nylon, released its first feature, the unabashedly bizarre eXistenZ, co-starring Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Later that year, he won an Academy Award nomination for his role in The Talented Mr. Ripley,

co-starring Matt Damon.

Early Career

Actor. Born December 29, 1972, in Lewisham, London, England. Raised in South London by his parents, who were both schoolteachers, Law joined the National Youth Music Theatre at age 13, where he acted in such productions as Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. He left school at age 16 after winning a part as a teenage runaway on the British television soap opera Families. Over the next several years, Law won parts on stage, in a touring production of Pygmalion and The Fastest Clock in the Universe in London (both 1992), and on TV in both Britain and the U.S. (a 1990 episode of Sherlock Holmes during the PBS series Mystery!). In 1994, Law made his film debut, in the poorly received British film Shopping; the film also featured Law's future wife, Sadie Frost, an actress best known for her appearance in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992).

The classically handsome Law initially found a greater measure of success on stage than on screen. He starred in the London production of Les Parents Terribles in 1995, and became the only member of the cast who was invited to reprise his role in the hit Broadway version of the play, Indiscretions. Law earned a Tony Award nomination for Featured Actor for his starring role complete with a much-talked-about nude scene opposite Kathleen Turner, as a son involved in an incestuous relationship with his mother.




Disappointing Film Debut

By contrast, his first several U.S. films met with a less than warm reception, both critically and commercially. In 1997, he had important supporting roles in three major American films: in the futuristic thriller Gattaca, co-starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, he played a genetically-perfect man crippled in an accident; in both Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, directed by Clint Eastwood and co-starring Kevin Spacey and John Cusack, and Wilde, he played dangerously tempting objects of homosexual desire. Though all three films did mediocre business, Law received praise for his magnetic screen presence and, inevitably, his sultry good looks. Several more disappointments followed, including the little-seen I Love You, I Love You Not (1997), co-starring

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