FILMOGRAPHY

2006] Untitled Music High Project
2005] The Suffering: Ties That Bind (VG)
2005] Angel
2003] Plainsong (TV)
2003] "After the Deluge" (mini)
2003] Ned Kelly
2002] The Adventures of Tom Thumb & Thumbelina (V) (voice)
2002] The Hard Word
2002] The Rookie
2001-05] "Six Feet Under"
2001] Very Annie Mary
2001] Blow
2001] Blow Dry
1999] Me Myself I
1998] Hilary and Jackie
1998] Amy
1998] Divorcing Jack 1998] Among Giants
1998] Since You've Been Gone (TV)
1997] My Son the Fanatic
1997] My Best Friend's Wedding
1997] Welcome to Woop Woop
1996] To Have and to Hold
1996] Jude
1996] Children of the Revolution
1996] Cosi
1995] Small Treasures
1994] "Jimeoin"
1994] Muriel's Wedding
1993] The Feds (TV)
1993] "Secrets"

LINKS

IMDB
rachelgriffiths.net/

CONTACT

Rachel Griffiths
c/o United Talent Agency
9560 Wilshire Blvd. #500
Beverly Hills, CA 9021

Born 20 February 1968 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Has two older brothers, Sam Griffiths and Ben Griffiths.

Married Andrew Taylor on 31 December 2002

In 2003 Rachel & Andrew had a son Banjo Patrick Taylor born in Melbourne on November 22. And in 2005 they welcomed their second child daughter, Adelaide Rose, born in Los Angeles June 23.

Starred on stage in Proof, the play that Mary Louise Parker performes on Broadway and Gwyneth Paltrow in London.

Lived on the Gold Coast, Queensland until age five, then moved to Melbourne.

Rachel Griffiths graduated from Victoria College with a Bachelor of Education in drama and dance in 1990.

Ran topless through Melbourne's Crown Casino on its opening night in protest holding a sign that said “Need, not greed.” . Was asked by media why she felt the need to do so and replied :"If I didn't flash my tits, you wouldn't have put me in the paper!"

Griffiths began her career in the theatre. In addition to her acting roles, she wrote Another World, Another Thing and created a one-woman show, Barbie Gets Hip which was viewed at the 1991 Melbourne International Film Festival.

Rachel has studied widely about architectural theory and the history of architecture, and loves to go around checking out buildings.

She joined the theater group, Woolly Jumpers Inc. shortly after college.

Griffiths began to gain international recognition after her portrayal as Rhonda in "Muriel's Wedding," for which she took home both the Australian Film Critics Award and the Australian Film Institute Award for best supporting actress.

Nominated for an oscar as best actress in a supporting role for Hilary & jackie in 1999.

She was awarded the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or TV movie in 2002. She was nominated for an Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Six Feet Under in 2002

In 2002 her short film Roundabout (which chronicles the eventful day in the life of a man besieged by work and domestic dramas) won Best Australian Short Film at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

In 1998 her short film Tulip (about a man's readjustment to life after his wife's death) won an OCIC Award at MIFF. And in 1999 it won Best Of The Festival in the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival. And at the Aspen Shortfest in 1999 Tulip won the 'Watch It' Award & the audience award - special recognition.

Won a Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series for Six Feet Under

Rachel on Roundabouts success:
"To make a short film that explores depression and anxiety in such a visceral and cinematic way was a very difficult thing to realise. We are thrilled that our efforts to change our culture's response to mental health issues has been so richly rewarded,"

Rachel on Six Feet Under scripts:
" I am regularly on the point of tears in script read-throughs. It's the first moment where everyone's around and it's a very powerful cast. And even though people aren't really peaking at the read through, often the guest actors come in with a little more. It can get pretty emotional."

Rachel on Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball:
"He's got a talent for taking you places. And people really want to go on the trip if they feel safe. And for all the dangerous places that the show goes, there's something an audience knows, that it's going to be safe, and I think that's because Alan always makes you laugh. He always surprises and he's never earnest, nor is he nihilistic. All the pain in the end isn't for nothing, it's always for something. I think he has this redemptive quality to his work that draws an audience in."

Rachel on the difficulty in playing a role of a person that experiances so much grief:
"I've played characters that carry a lot of pain for shorter amounts of time, in Hillary and Jackie, for instance. That shoot was nine weeks and it was like carrying a big burden of hurt for a nine week period, and I remember when we wrapped I just went mental. I just had to break out. I was like, "Where is the bar? Where is the good time?" But to sustain a character over six months, it gets you down after a while. Especially because this is not my hometown so I don't go home at the end of the day, and my Mom can't come around for a chat and I can't drop in on a lot of people who have known me for a long time so yeah, it is kind of tough. But I would find it tougher to play a shallow character, locked into some twelve year bad series with bad writing and bad directors. That's more likely to make me suicidal than actually playing a very rich-feeling character."

Rachel:
“It's like I've got two different sides of my brain. My acting creature is this very volatile - it's like a boxer, I'm prepped up for the fight, just ready to react. The director in me is much calmer and it's the other side of the brain, I'm unemotional - well I'm not unemotional, but I don't react emotionally - I react kind of in a problem-solving, practical kind of way.”

Rachel on commericla tv:
“I think drama on commercial television is toothpaste delivery devises, you know or insurance delivery devises, and I think it's impossible for people to be as engaged in a drama when they are being constantly interrupted.”

Rachel on her actors training:
"I applied for VCA and NIDA and stuff twice and I didn't get in. Once I'd made that decision, so I thought 'Oh you know bugger them'. I thought in three years time I want to be at a point that I would be had I come through an institution. I want an agent, I want to have a really solid skill base, I wanted to understand myself as a performer, I wanted to understand different techniques. So I was extremely lucky that there were still then regional theatre companies that now no longer exist, so that option isn't there if you don't get into drama school. And the Victorian Ministry of the Arts and the Australia Council funded this theatre for young people company that for two years provided me with an extraordinary resource. We'd spend like six months of the year making up plays with writers and different collaborators and then we'd tour them for five months. We were doing like 500 shows a year and I really came out quite sure of myself, which was great."

Rachel on not getting into NIDA or VCA:
"it was a bit of a blow, because I did think I was talented. I'm so relieved now that I didn't because I was so institutionalised, I couldn't see any other way at that moment. I was terribly distraught that I didn't get in, because I was well aware that people that do come out through those institutions kind of get a golden handshake in a way. If you're in the cream of your class, your agents come and people pick you and you're tutored and everyone's talking about you. You come out of NIDA and walk straight into a TV series, and I just thought, 'bugger it, why is my life always so hard, why do I always get the hard road?' you know and in the end I was just so relieved that it forced me to a different position of not having to seek approval anymore and I think that would have been the worst thing for me as an artist: to be in a position where I was seeking approval from an art school's administrators.

Rachel:
"I have a reactive capacity. I'm most happy on screen when I have someone else on with me, and the scenes are about a relationship, not so much a moving forward of the plot. I love the intimacy of that. It's a cool thing to keep your cards under the table and just play them. I'd be kind of hopeless as the Indiana Jones character. I never see myself as a Beautiful Carrier of People's Projections. I represent Everygirl. People can identify with me when I'm true to that. When I'm not true to it, I'm really, really bad."

Rachel:
"I get so turned on by telling stories. I think I've got to just come to terms with that, it's like coming to terms with your sexuality. It's like 'okay I've finally come out of the closet, I'm a filmmaker, I can't deny it any longer, I want to be behind the camera'."

Rachel on looking like Juliette Lewis:
"When I saw Cape Fear I was with my best friend and a cold chill ran down both of us. It was me at 17! So I made a point of having my hair color different than Juliette's."