Rebecca Pidgeon

Though she also has a successful recording career as a jazz/folk singer/songwriter, actress Rebecca Pidgeon is perhaps more familiar for her work with her husband, hard-edged playwright/filmmaker David Mamet. Born in Massachusetts and raised in Scotland, Pidgeon studied acting at London's prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Along with performing on stage in Great Britain, Pidgeon made her film debut acting with Trevor Howard, Anthony Hopkins, and Hugh Grant in the 1920s-set Irish political drama The Dawning (1989). Further burnishing her thespian resumé, Pidgeon appeared in the BBC TV film She's Been Away (1990) with Dame Peggy Ashcroft and co-starred as Sonya in a TV version of Anton Chekov's Uncle Vanya (1991). Pidgeon's career came to a key turning point, however, after she starred in the London premiere of David Mamet's play Speed-the-Plow. Marrying Mamet in 1991, Pidgeon moved to the United States and co-starred in her first major American film, Mamet's provocative cop drama Homicide (1991). Pidgeon subsequently acted in Mamet projects throughout the 1990s, including the telefilm based on Mamet's book The Water Engine (1992); the controversial off-Broadway sexual harassment play Oleanna; and the Broadway production of The Old Neighborhood. Though she was off the screen during the mid-'90s, Pidgeon still composed the music score for the film version of Oleanna (1994). By the late '90s, Pidgeon was an integral member of Mamet's film repertory company. After co-starring as the pertly efficient assistant/potential femme fatale in Mamet's hit art house mind game The Spanish Prisoner (1997), Pidgeon returned to period films as liberated Winslow daughter Catherine in Mamet's adaptation of Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy (1999). Softening her style somewhat, Pidgeon surprised critics with her charming, if no-nonsense, turn as Philip Seymour Hoffman's sweet, literary small town love interest in Mamet's Hollywood satire State and Main (2000). Pidgeon and Mamet have two daughters.

~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide