Rene Russo

Rene Russo met screenwriter Dan Gilroy on the set of ‘Freejack’. They married on March 14, 1992 and have a daughter together, model Rose Gilroy (born 1993). The family currently resides in Brentwood, California.

Since childhood, Russo has suffered from bipolar disorder and takes medication for it. She is a born-again Christian.

Born on February 17, 1954, in Burbank, California, Rene Russo is one of the two daughters of Shirley (née Balocca) and Nino Russo. Shirley, who was of English, German, and Italian ancestry, worked at a factory and as a barmaid, while Nino, of Italian descent, was a sculptor and car mechanic. Her mother raised her and her sister Toni alone after their father left them when Rene was two years old. Through her father, she has three half-brothers: Jim, Anthony, and David; and one half-sister: January Debra.

She studied at Burroughs High School in Ridgecrest, California till tenth grade after which she dropped out of school. Aware of her mother’s struggles to keep the family afloat, she found employment at several off-the-wall jobs. She was a movie theatre cashier for a while as well as a worker at an eyeglass factory.

When she was in middle school, Russo was diagnosed with scoliosis, a medical condition in which a person’s spine has a sideways curve. Fortunately, the early detection meant that she was treated only by wearing back braces and did not have to go undergo invasive and painful surgeries.

Rene Russo began her modelling career in the early 1970s, after being allegedly spotted by an International Creative Management agent named John Crosby at a 1972 Rolling Stones Concert. Cosby helped her get a contract from the Ford Modelling Agency and she subsequently became one of the top supermodels working in the industry, making an appearance on the covers of ‘Vogue,’ ‘Mademoiselle,’ and ‘Cosmopolitan’ and participating in ad campaigns for various perfume and cosmetics.

Being in a profession thoroughly afflicted by ageism, she was getting less and less work as she entered her thirties. Russo reacted pragmatically, knowing that she had not finished school and hence did not have the education to fall back on. Thus she went on a hiatus from the show business for a short while and started studying acting and theatre. During this period, she took lessons from veteran actor Allan Rich and appeared in several plays.

She debuted on television in the short-lived series ‘Sable’, which was based on the comic book ‘Jon Sable: Freelance’. In 1989, she made her big screen debut in the sports comedy ‘Major League’. She made a cameo appearance in the film’s sequel ‘Major League II’ (1994).

In her next project, ‘Mr. Destiny’ (1990), she played Bill McCutcheon’s daughter. In the 1991 crime drama ‘One Good Cop’, she was cast as Michael Keaton’s wife.

She was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Julie Redlund in the science fiction film ‘Freejack’ (1992). In the same year, she starred opposite Mel Gibson as LAPD Sgt. Lorna Cole in the third instalment of the Lethal Weapon films. She came back for the fourth and last film in the series, ‘Lethal Weapon 4’ (1998).

Rene Russo is best known for her role in ‘Nightcrawler’ in which she portrayed Nina Romina, a morning news editor desperately clinging on to the power and position that she has garnered over the course of her professional life. Russo’s husband, Dan Gilroy’s directorial venture, the film is a cynical, unapologetic tale of a sociopath, L.A. newshound Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), who prowls the city under the cover of night for the goriest, grizzliest scoops he can find.

Gilroy specifically created the character of Romina with Russo in mind. He had feared that the character could very easily be relegated to a "hard-nosed corporate bitch" and that his wife could bring a sense of vulnerability to her. Never having played a desperate woman on screen before, Russo initially struggled with how to approach the role. She evoked the past experiences from her own life when she had been compelled to cross moral boundaries as a result of fear and desperation. She received a BAFTA nomination for her performance.