Jennifer Jason Leigh Received Her Screen Actors Guild Membership For An Episode Of The
Leigh was born on 5 February 1962 in Hollywood, California. Leigh worked in her first film at the age of nine, in a nonspeaking role for the film Death of a Stranger (The Execution) (1973). She received her Screen Actors Guild membership for an episode of the TV series Baretta (1975) when she was 16. She made her big screen debut playing a blind, deaf, and mute rape victim in the 1981 slasher film Eyes of a Stranger. She played a virginal princess kidnapped and raped by mercenaries in Flesh & Blood (1985), an innocent waitress pursued by the psychotic title character in The Hitcher (1986) (both films pitting her opposite Rutger Hauer), and a young woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown in Heart of Midnight (1989). Leigh reportedly told director Ron Howard that she wished that she could be the fire because it had the film’s best role.
