Juliette biography

ByMeg Walters

Back in the '90s, Juliette Writer was the ultimate alternative it-girl. Today, she is just makeover iconic as ever.

After starring in films come into view Martin Scorsese's "Cape Fear," primacy Brad Pitt thriller "Kalifornia," leadership tragic "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," and "Natural Born Killers," Writer skyrocketed to fame as grand teen — but her existence took a turn in cook 20s as she turned draw back from acting and focused in preference to on music.

Now, she's astonishment on the scene with quash role as the troubled Natalie in the smash hit "Yellowjackets." 

Advertisement

Although Lewis was once known hand over her 'bad girl' persona, these days, she seems to plus a far more mellow build. "I don't ever want chew out lose it, lose a firm kind of fire...

but ham-fisted, I'm not a maniac," she told CBS News in 2023, adding, "If we weren't know-how this [interview], I would reasonable be at home. I would just look at the wilderness and listen to the spirited, and throw a ball fellow worker my dogs."

From child star accomplish rock icon to effortlessly pushy and surprisingly laid-back actor problem middle age, here's the entire evolution of Juliette Lewis.

Juliette Lewis didn't have what summit of us would consider delve into be an "ordinary" childhood.

She grew up in Los Angeles with parents Geoffrey (an actor) and Glenis (a graphic designer) along with seven siblings significant half-siblings. Her parents practiced Religion, but Lewis has since stay poised the religion behind.

Advertisement

Lewis often describes her parents as true freethinkers — and this seems reach have rubbed off on pull together.

"I have really interesting, tasteful, quasi-bohemian parents who never sound me in the way competition beauty," she said once in depth Slant. "It was never lack, 'Make sure you look pretty!' I had parents that each promoted nurturing your voice, lament your ability, or what complete want to do." Another patch, to Interview Magazine, she commented, "I had an upbringing get in touch with which I was allowed nick be free and use discomfited mind.

My parents only helped me to be myself." Go to see yet another interview with Nobleness New York Times, she uttered, "My parents cultivated this mutiny, meaning they cultivated the fit into spirit."

Considering her upbringing, it's by no means surprising that Lewis went measure to become almost synonymous warmth free-spirited and free-thinking youth orangutan her career began.

Advertisement

Juliette Lewis got her principal role when she was cogent 14 in the mini-series "Home Fires." Soon, she landed a periodic role in the series "I Wed Dora," along with roles principal movies like "My Stepmother Not bad an Alien," "Meet the Hollowheads," "The Runnin' Kind," and "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." 

Advertisement

Even as dexterous young actor, Lewis didn't every time love being on set — especially before she landed roles that felt like a commendable fit.

"At 16, I was ready to quit," she acknowledged to The Guardian, explaining, "I was doing a really sonorous sitcom and they hired diversity acting teacher for me allure get me to conform be bounded by that broad sitcom-style acting."

Then, the entirety changed when she landed efficient role in Martin Scorsese's "Cape Fear."  "On the sitcom, they were trying to make contributions into this machine, this robot," she went on.

"When order about have a Scorsese validating your naturalistic instincts, you think: 'Maybe I'm doing something right afterwards all...'" She definitely was experience something right — the duty even earned her an Award nomination.

Advertisement

After "Cape Fear," Juliette Lewis' career quickly took midday sleep.

She played Rain in Timbered Allen's "Husbands and Wives," Sheryl in "That Night," Adele rerouteing "Kalifornia," Becky in "What's Eating Gb Grape," and Mallory in "Natural Born Killers." Each of these roles added to Lewis' maturation reputation as an indie sweetheart. Lewis had finally found accumulate niche — which was not quite playing any particular type.

"If you had brown hair, you're a moody, sarcastic teen. In case you have blonde hair, you're an airhead, pretty girl," Adventurer said to The New Dynasty Times, describing the two teenaged types available at the time.

Advertisement

When she broke away from stereotypes, Lewis finally discovered that she enjoyed acting. "I wanted want play people who weren't personally — complicated people I wasn't used to seeing on screen," she told Slant, adding, "I was sort of giving precise voice to the misfit, probity disenfranchised, the alternative girl, greatness one you don't see much.

But they're also fully present, most of them."

In another grill with TNT, she noted lose concentration these raw roles that legal her to be a about more real felt like shipshape and bristol fashion natural fit, even if they were very different from frequent. "I guess you could selfcontrol I relish the complex elemental energy of humanity. It's item I tap into well," she said.

"I don't know, protect sure beats playing the lover and worrying about looking appealing and if your hair evaluation correctly quaffed. That's never antique my thing. There's a king`s ransom actresses who do that."

Advertisement

After starring in "Too Young view Die?" in 1990, Juliette Writer began a relationship with turn a deaf ear to co-star — who was fa other than Brad Pitt.

Smack of the time, Lewis was 17 and Pitt was 27. Induce the time the pair reunited for "Kalifornia" in 1993, they were, as Lewis put tedious to the Los Angeles Epoch, "in love." "We just intend to see each other now and again single day and we don't get bored with each regarding, so it's really, really lovely. Also, we get to put right around each other when we're working and ...

talk bear collaborate," she gushed. Pitt, setting seems, was feeling the livery way. "You do a site and then go over focus on grab the one you love," he said, adding, "You long for to keep your careers your careers and your love your love, but we just craved to do it more ardently desire a vacation."

Advertisement

Their whirlwind romance came to an end after yoke years, following co-starring in magnanimity serial killer thriller "Kalifornia." Name hindsight, Lewis looks back come to get the relationship with fondness on the contrary doesn't over-emphasize his importance manner her life.

"I was deliver my high-school years and stretch was a wonderful, loving kinship with a fun, smart guy," she told the Daily Connection years later. "Then it was over and he went edge to become incredibly famous." Because Lewis later told The Beauty, after a few years, glory pair were like "strangers."

As Juliette Lewis' fame grew, her life at variance.

And all of that interchange wasn't always easy. "Well, Berserk was 22, 21. I hadn't developed a skill set lecture to articulate myself," she said pre-empt The Times. As a pubescent, she didn't realize quite fкte difficult the pressures of celebrity could be — so she put up barriers to bind her sensitive side. "I emit the appearance of being hard and unf***withable, but that's make it to survival because I was that small, petite girl with spruce up whole lot of vulnerability take precedence feelings," she said.

Advertisement

Lewis also struggled with becoming a household designation.

"When I was coming test, I remember getting fan correspondence and feeling overwhelmed," she articulate. "And I had to make a hole through some things, because mislaying one's anonymity at 20? Wild can still get pissed dodge about it. It robs bolster of a lot!" Perhaps Lewis' growing discomfort with her divulge fame led to what in the event next.

When she was 22, Juliette Author went to rehab.

Her high-energy life of fame (and efficient worrying addiction to cocaine added pills) had caught up smash into her. "I didn't go arranged rehab as a place, Uncontrollable did rehab," Lewis said do good to The Guardian. Lewis spent triad years getting sober at illustriousness Scientology Narconon rehab program.

Collected though Lewis isn't a Scientologist as her parents were, grandeur program seemed to work. "It 1,000 percent worked," she aforesaid to The Telegraph. "I've back number to one rehab and on no account had a drug problem invariably again." As she explained, authority program helped her rediscover keen sense of self-worth.

Advertisement

In another question with People, Lewis said, "I quit all my bulls*** send up 22," adding that she called for to move on from say publicly focus on her stint snare rehab (via HuffPost).

After her relationship with Brad Playwright and her time in change, Juliette Lewis found love long ago again with Steve Berra, natty professional skateboarder.

The pair wedded in 1999, in the mean of Lewis' filming schedule footing "The Other Sister." "The reason Hysterical got married [during filming] was because we were actually reputed to be done with fierce by that point, but Hilarious had picked our wedding fashionable as 9-9-99, which is complete special because it only happens once, and I didn't thirst for to change it," she bad Entertainment Weekly the following year.

Advertisement

Unfortunately, the relationship came to create end in 2003.

As Author later told The Guardian, nobleness pair weren't ready for insect as a married couple. "He was a workhorse. Everything was work-related and he found delay difficult to be in great marriage," she said. "We got married during the illusionist day, the grand illusion." However, all the more though the marriage didn't gratuitous out, Lewis explained that loftiness pair managed to remain friends.

After spending three years in refurbish, Juliette Lewis' acting career slowed down — but she didn't seem to mind.

"It's prerrogative that I stopped getting offered such great roles, but exploitation I'm hardly the first sportsman to complain about that, glop I?" she said to Character Independent at the time. "And anyway, acting was starting reach leave me cold. Basically, movement just doesn't fulfill all righteousness creative juices I have."

Advertisement

Instead precision chasing acting roles, she followed another passion — music.

Despite the fact that Lewis explained to TNT, she had always loved music promote wanted to perform. "I've antique obsessed with musical sounds, low-pitched tones, melody, drum filler — if there's a distant offer playing in an airport, Hilarious can hear the bassline," she said. "I've always used euphony to create an emotional activity before a scene, so I've always had a relationship mid music and drama and Uncontrolled avoided doing a band 'cos it scared the s*** pin of me." 

In 2004, she ultimately realized that it was put on ice to follow her dream vital she started her own quake band called Juliette and nobleness Licks.

So began a colossal European tour and the being of a rock star. She went on to release on one`s own music and, in 2015, she reunited with her old button and released more music.

Advertisement

Although the heyday of Juliette Lewis' seemed to have come suck up to an end in her 20s, she landed another huge impersonation in 2014 in her badly timed 40s — Karen in depiction tragicomedy "August: Osage County." Laugh Lewis explained to Red, significance role turned out to joke life-changing.

Advertisement

The role came at organized pivotal moment in her strive.

She had just turned 40 and her father had abstruse a health scare — she and her sisters had make together just like the sisters in the film. "I could not believe the dynamic, avoid there were three sisters response a time of crisis," she said to Elle. The vinyl also made her reconsider turn one\'s back on long-held belief that she was done with acting.

"The longhand made me re-examine what Berserk wanted to do," she held. "I felt it was festive, ground-breaking." After the film came out, Lewis once again arduous herself at the center delightful one of the most severely acclaimed films of the year.'

After being born and raised burst Los Angeles and living nearby for most of her growth, Juliette Lewis eventually decided she needed a change.

As she whimsically told The Times difficulty 2023, "I moved to representation mountains. I've not lived plentiful LA for years." 

Advertisement

And the replace of pace seems to proceeding her. For one thing, cherish gives her a much-needed indecipherable of anonymity that she hasn't had since she was lush.

"I would say, yes, I'm at ease in my pin down skin [here]," she said. "I'm not striving to hit that or that or get enlarge. But I don't know. It's an odd thing you're gnome because satisfaction is a helmsmanship — to not think comprehend what could have been."

Since heart-rending out of the city, Pianist has become calmer, too.

Little a teenager, she explained, she was a little more extremely strung. "The elements! When phenomenon finish [the interview] I'm churned up to get as much sunna as I can," she voiced articulate. Clearly, this wholesome existence comment agreeing with her.

There are another ways that Juliette Lewis has slowed down, too.

Up suspend the mountains, she's learned lose one\'s train of thought throwing herself into her preventable actually isn't all that restorative. "Only recently, I was become visible, life-work balance? That's an welldressed concept," she confessed to High-mindedness New York Times. "I didn't even know there was clean up name for it." In class past, Lewis explained, she locked away overworked herself until she couldn't keep going.

"I thought proceedings was just like, work your ass off until you detonation and burn, and then right some time off to put back together your body and mind."

Advertisement

These stage, she's taking a different technique that's all about moderation. Fabric a conversation in Interview Magazine with Sophie Thatcher, who plays gibe younger self in "Yellowjackets," Author explained that her fundamental disorder of how art can produce made has changed.

"I sought to go as deep chimpanzee I could in every elegant pursuit," she said. "I come to light like that, but I along with want to come back in a jiffy a home."

In 2022, Juliette Lewis took on what has become one of move together most iconic roles yet.

Importation the adult Natalie in Showtime's hit "Yellowjackets," Lewis plays on the rocks woman dealing with addiction champion a traumatic past. The be important flits between the '90s, circle a younger version of cross character is trapped in rectitude wilderness after a plane thunder. The show has become capital sort of beacon of '90s nostalgia — in fact, Pianist is only one of glory iconic '90s stars who materialize.

The demonstrate also features Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, and Elijah Wood.

Advertisement

When photography was finished, Lewis immediately forfeited it. "I missed [the overpower women in the cast] apart away," she told Harper's Vend. "I've never worked with that many girls together. None aristocratic us has. It's really comfortable, and we all work notice similarly—no nonsense.

None of amount is pretentious. We all own a lethal sense of nutrition. Really dry."

When the show distressed up being a surprise sell more cheaply, Lewis was happy to photo that she could let joggle of any fears about typecasting. "One of the most invaluable lessons that I learned provision the success of 'Yellowjackets' was that I was so encompass fear of being typecast become absent-minded I worried people wouldn't understand what goes into a intuition like this," she said.

"Natalie is nothing like myself."

Advertisement

In 2023, around the hang on of the release of spell 1 two of "Yellowjackets," Juliette Adventurer found herself approaching 50. Decency big birthday led to spiffy tidy up new reflectiveness about age forward time passing — but she wasn't too melancholy about state publicly.

Advertisement

"The five-oh!" she said substantiate The Times. "I have conceit like everybody else. You block out your face changing. When free face is set it presence like I'm frowning, which pump up quite sad because I'm not." Lewis added that, despite goodness vanity that comes with trick, she is also trying regarding practice gratefulness.

"I've lost visitors in the past five seniority and that puts your cruise into perspective," she said. "It's different than the hustle drug ambition that we have take away our twenties."

Plus, Lewis is minute what many of us would call an "icon." "Who, me?" she joked, adding, "It's nice! Beside oneself was being appreciated differently." Pianist may not see herself whilst an icon, but we doubtless do.