Patricia Arquette ( ar-KET; born April 8, 1968) is an American actress. Known for her roles on film and television, she has received an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Arquette made her feature film debut as Kristen Parker in the fantasy slasher A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987). She has since had starring roles in several critically acclaimed films, including True Romance (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Flirting with Disaster (1996), Lost Highway (1997), The Hi-Lo Country (1998), Bringing Out the Dead (1999), and Holes (2003). For playing a single mother in the coming-of-age film Boyhood (2014), which was filmed from 2002 until 2014, Arquette won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
On television, she starred as a character based on the medium Allison DuBois in the supernatural drama series Medium (2005–2011), winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2005. For her role as a prison worker in the miniseries Escape at Dannemora (2018) and as Dee Dee Blanchard in the miniseries The Act (2019), she won Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress for The Act. She has starred as Harmony Cobel in the Apple TV thriller series Severance since 2022, earning two Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
Early life and family
Patricia Arquette was born on April 8 1968, in Chicago, Illinois, to Lewis Arquette, an actor and puppeteer, and Brenda Olivia "Mardi" (née Nowak), who was involved in the arts and worked as a therapist. Through her father, Patricia is distantly related to explorer Meriwether Lewis. Arquette's father had converted from Catholicism to Islam. Arquette's mother was Jewish, and her ancestors emigrated from Poland and Russia.
Her father's family's surname was originally "Arcouet", and his paternal line was of French-Canadian descent. Her paternal grandfather was comedian Cliff Arquette. Patricia's siblings also became actors: Rosanna, Richmond, Alexis, and David. When she was a child, her parents offered to get her braces for her teeth, but she refused, claiming she didn't want to look perfect and "it didn't feel like it would fit who I was inside."
For a time her family lived on a commune in rural Bentonville, Virginia. She has said they became poorer the longer they lived there and she believes that experience enlarged her empathy. Her father was an alcoholic; her mother was violently abusive. When Arquette was seven, the family relocated to Chicago. They later settled in Los Angeles, California. Arquette attended Catholic school, and has said that when she was a teenager, she had wanted to be a nun.
At the age of 14, Arquette ran away from home after learning her father was having an affair—she settled with her sister, Rosanna Arquette, in Los Angeles. She has described her father as a working actor for industrial films, commercials and voiceovers – he was best known for his role as J.D. Pickett in the TV series The Waltons. Before pursuing a career in acting, Arquette had wanted to be a midwife.
She put this career prospect aside briefly in an attempt to gain acting jobs and gained success in the industry.
Career
1987–1996: Early career and breakthrough
In 1987, Arquette's first starring roles included pregnant teenager Stacy in the television film Daddy, boarding school student Zero in Pretty Smart, and Kristen Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, alongside Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger and Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson. She reprised her role as Kristen in the music video to Dokken's Dream Warriors (1987). She was asked to reprise her role in the sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988), but she declined the offer in order to do other projects. She gave up the role of Tralala in Last Exit to Brooklyn due to her pregnancy with her son Enzo.
In 1988, Arquette played the daughter of Tess Harper in Far North. Her roles in the early 1990s were in low budget and independent films, including Prayer of the Rollerboys (1990) as love interest of Corey Haim's character, The Indian Runner (1991), which was the directorial debut of Sean Penn; and the drama Inside Monkey Zetterland. In 1992, she won a CableACE Award for Best Lead Actress in a Mini-Series for her portrayal of a deaf girl with epilepsy in Wildflower, directed by Diane Keaton and also starring Reese Witherspoon.
In her early career, Arquette received the most recognition for her role as Alabama Whitman, a free-spirited, kind-hearted prostitute in Tony Scott's True Romance (1993). The film was a moderate box office success but became a cultural landmark because of Quentin Tarantino's screenplay, which preceded Pulp Fiction, although some critics were deterred by the graphic violence. In one scene, Arquette puts up a fierce physical struggle in a fight with James Gandolfini (as a viciously sadistic killer) which her character ultimately wins. Arquette's performance received unanimous praise from critics. Janet Maslin of The New York Times remarked that Arquette played her role with "surprising sweetness", while Peter Travers remarked that "Arquette delivers sensationally".
Arquette next appeared in the television film Betrayed by Love (1994), and the well-received biopic Ed Wood, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, where she portrayed his girlfriend. Her next role was as Laura Bowman in John Boorman's Beyond Rangoon (1995), which drew mixed critical reviews, but was a success internationally. In France, it was an official selection at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, where it became one of the most popular hits of the event. Although the film had lackluster reviews, Arquette's performance as an American tourist in Burma during the 8888 Uprising was regarded as one of the work's strong points. Michael Sragow, writing for The New Yorker, stated "Arquette gives the kind of mighty physical performance usually delivered by men in existential action classics like 'The Wages of Fear', but she suffuses it with something all her own – she's bulletproof yet vulnerable." Hal Hinson of The Washington Post remarked that the film was "odd, brilliant in places, but frustrating all the same," commenting that "Arquette shows real grit when the chips are down".
Arquette appeared in three films in 1996, the first the comedy film Flirting with Disaster (1996), about a young man's cross-country pursuit to find his parents. Critical reception was largely positive, with Todd McCarthy of Variety praising the film and the authenticity of Arquette's performance, highlighting that "Arquette [is] very believably distracted and infuriated". Flirting with Disaster grossed $14 million at the American box office and was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. Her second film released that year was the period drama The Secret Agent, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel of the same name. The film received average reviews. Infinity was her third film that year, a biographical drama about the early life of American physicist Richard Feynman. The film received mixed to positive reviews. Although Emmanuel Levy of Variety said that Arquette was "miscast", he stated that she "registers more credibly in the first part of the film, when she plays an adolescent".
1997–2003: Independent film work and critical success
In 1997, Arquette starred in David Lynch's neo-noir psychological thriller Lost Highway, in dual roles as Renee Madison and Alice Wakefield. The film had an ambiguous narrative, which polarized audiences and drew varying critical opinion. It established a strong cult following and has continued to gain recognition. Arquette played an elusive femme fatale in a critically revered performance that enabled her to draw on her sexuality more than any other previous role. Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, disliked the film…