Robin Wright biography

Early Life

Robin Wright was born in Dallas, Texas on April 8, 1966 but grew up in San Diego, California. The daughter of a pharmaceutical executive and an independent executive sales director for Mary Kay cosmetics, Wright was a natural beauty and began modeling at an early age, traveling to both Paris and Japan while still in high school. Wright says she pursued modeling mainly for the traveling opportunities it provided: "I think that the whole idea of beauty distorts your ability to not only find yourself, but to have a healthy sense of your identity... And then I went to Europe and I didn't want to come home. I loved Europe so much."

Even though, as a teenager, Wright was elected homecoming queen and had a successful modeling career, she was actually more interested in dancing than in being photographed. "I think the inception of my interest in arts was when I was around 9 or 10 and I started dancing, she says. "I was really convinced that I was going to go to New York and be onstage in A Chorus Line. Then that idea was sort of usurped from my life because we moved to San Diego."

 

Big Break

After high school, Robin Wright was encouraged to act by her modeling agent and landed a lead part on the soap opera Santa Barbara. Though she lacked any formal acting training and often shot her scenes the same day she received a script, with no rehearsal, Wright won three daytime Emmy nominations for her work on the show. This drew the attention of director Rob Reiner, who decided to audition her for the lead role in his new film, an irreverent 1987 take on Robin Hood-style swashbuckler films called The Princess Bride. An iconic film that resonated with children and adults alike, The Princess Bride launched Wright to stardom; her winning performance as Princess Buttercup suddenly transformed her into bona fide film actor at the age of 21. A year after the film's release, Wright divorced her first husband of two years, Dane Witherspoon.

Despite the success of The Princess Bride, Wright was ambitious and did not want to be typecast early on as a victimized damsel character actor. Determined not to let her blonde hair or good looks get in the way of more complex roles, she turned down one-dimensional, passive female parts in blockbusters like Jurassic Park and Batman Forever in favor of a much darker role in State of Grace, a gritty 1990 film about Irish gangsters. While shooting the film, she fell in love with her costar, actor Sean Penn, and became pregnant shortly thereafter with the pair's first daughter, Dylan Frances, followed soon by their son, Hopper Jack. She turned down the role of Maid Marian in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves due to her pregnancy. Next she starred in The Playboys, an Irish film, before taking on her next big role as Jenny in Forrest Gump. Like many of Wright's characters, Jenny is a tortured soul who suffers from drug addiction and depression but has a wild spirit and cannot be contained. The movie ends with Jenny dying from AIDS, a far cry from the irrepressible damsel Wright played in The Princess Bride.

 

Marriage to Sean Penn

Following the smashing critical and box-office success of Forrest Gump, Wright and Penn wed in 1996, the beginning of a passionate and often tumultuous marriage. Being linked to an incredibly famous man was strange for Robin Wright-Penn, since she never thought of herself as a celebrity: "Famous is celebrityism and I don't want that... I know that I'm not that. Everybody knows who you are, I can't imagine living that life, but I don't think I consider myself famous." For his part, Penn tried to avoid paparazzi and crazed fans, preferring to spend time at the park or the beach with his family. For much of their marriage, she did not work at all and instead led a very private life devoted to her children and her husband. When she did return to acting, she worked closely with her husband; the two starred as star-crossed, unhinged lovers in Nick Cassavetes' She's So Lovely and Wright later played Jack Nicholson's love interest in Penn's third film as a director, The Pledge. In 2004, she said of her then-husband, "It's always been drama in my life with Sean, always. It's pronounced: that's the word I would use for him, in every way —presence, emotional life—'pronounced'. I think it's in his blood. He's always at the heart of something. Never a dull moment..." They pair conducted an off-and-on romance for many years, finally filing for divorce in 2007, followed by a reunion that lasted until the summer of 2010, at which point they divorced for good and she changed her name back from Robin Wright-Penn to simply Robin Wright.

 

Maturing Actress

Now 44 years old, Wright has time to reflect on her long and successful career as she prepares to take on new challenges in the future: "I'm ready to continue this work of actually not being afraid. I just feel like it took me a long time to grow up and to stop being inhibited in my work. I would read scripts and go, 'Oh, I'm not right. I could never do this. I could never achieve this character. This would be better for somebody else.' I remember calling directors numerous times and saying, 'Oh, you should cast so-and-so instead of me. They're much better for the role.' But I think I've been ready for a few years to just blow open the doors. And I really want to direct something. I think I'll start with a documentary and get my feet wet. But I don't have that fear of jumping off the cliff, where before, I always used to just stop and ask for directions, and you would kind of see that reticence in the work. So now, I'm completely rejuvenated when I get out there, and I'm ready to do more, play more."