Theresa Lynn Russell ( Paup; born March 20, 1957) is an American actress whose career spans over four decades. Her filmography includes over 50 feature films, ranging from mainstream to independent and experimental films. She is known for her frequent portrayals of brooding, troubled, and disturbed characters, as well as for her multiple collaborations with her husband, director Nicolas Roeg.
Russell began modeling as a teenager, which brought her to the attention of film producer Sam Spiegel, who facilitated her casting in Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon (1976), in which she played the daughter of a prominent film executive. In 1978, she starred opposite Dustin Hoffman in the critically acclaimed crime drama Straight Time. Her next role was a lead in English filmmaker Nicolas Roeg's controversial thriller Bad Timing (1980), which earned critical praise. Russell and Roeg began a romance while shooting the film, and it marked the first of six projects they would collaborate on following their 1982 marriage. She next appeared in Roeg's drama Eureka (1983), followed by the John Byrum-directed The Razor's Edge (1984). Russell portrayed Marilyn Monroe in Roeg's experimental alternate history film Insignificance (1985), followed by a lead role as a serial killer in Bob Rafelson's neo-noir film Black Widow (1987), which garnered her significant commercial attention.
Russell continued to collaborate with Roeg throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, appearing in a Roeg-directed segment of the anthology film Aria (1987), as well as the features Track 29 (1989) and Cold Heaven (1991). Other roles from this time included the crime dramas Physical Evidence (1989) and Impulse (1990). In 1991, Russell starred as a prostitute in Ken Russell's satirical drama Whore, followed by Steven Soderbergh's experimental black-and-white feature, Kafka.
After appearing in a number of independent films in the mid-1990s, Russell had a supporting role in the commercially successful neo-noir Wild Things (1998), and the critically acclaimed drama The Believer (2001). In 2005, she had a supporting role on the HBO miniseries Empire Falls, followed by a minor part in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 (2007). From the late 2000s through the 2010s, she appeared in several independent films and guest-starred on the television series Fringe (2009) and Cold Case (2010), as well as the television biopic Liz & Dick (2012)
Early life Russell was born Theresa Lynn Paup on March 20, 1957 in San Diego, California, the eldest of three children to teenage mother Carole Platt (née Mall) and Jerry Russell Paup, both natives of Burbank. Her father was in the United States Navy, and was stationed in San Diego at the time of her birth. One of Russell's grandfathers was a farmer originally from Iowa. When she was five years old, Russell's parents divorced, and her father relocated to Mexico. Her mother subsequently remarried, and moved the family to Los Angeles County, where Russell was raised in Burbank.
Through her mother's marriage to her stepfather, she has two half-siblings. Russell has said she grew up in poverty, and that at times her family required food stamps to survive. She had a turbulent relationship with her stepfather, whom she described as "hideous", "incapable" and "an asshole," and by age 13, she had begun experimenting with recreational drugs. Despite her early struggles, Russell commented in 1991: "I hate it when actors talk about what a hard time they had as kids. That was just my life. It wasn't horrible. When you're free, white, and over 21, how hard can it be? Get over it." As an adolescent, Russell was frequently placed in charge of her younger siblings; it was during this time that she became interested in acting after regularly watching classic films on cable television, particularly film noirs.
Russell attended Burbank High School, where she had her first acting experience portraying the titular character in a stage production of Gypsy. At age fourteen, she was approached while walking on a street in Los Angeles by a photographer who suggested she model. Suspecting the photographer merely wanted to exploit her, Russell requested that he meet her mother first, to which he obliged. She subsequently began modeling for a fashion photographer who was a friend of her mother. "I ended up having what I realize now was a long, almost like a Lolita/Humbert Humbert relationship with him—without the sex. He was madly in love with me and took pictures of me a lot. He would come round and we would go off and shoot pictures up in the mountains."
Russell dropped out of high school at 16 and moved onto a horse ranch with a 28-year-old boyfriend who worked as a primal scream therapist, whom she later described as "one of the most fucked-up people I have ever met." She enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Institute in West Hollywood to study acting at age 17, studying there for approximately three years.
Career 1976–1979: Career beginnings
Through her modeling work, Russell met photographer Peter Douglas, son of Kirk Douglas, who introduced her to film producer Sam Spiegel in 1975. At the time, Spiegel was beginning production of a film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon, directed by Elia Kazan and adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter. Spiegel suggested that Russell audition for the role of Cecilia Brady, the daughter of a studio executive (played by Robert Mitchum), a part in which she was ultimately cast. Russell said she was initially intimidated during filming due to her lack of screen acting experience: "I just felt like I needed to do my job. I couldn't relate to all of these famous people." For her credit in the film, she adopted the surname Russell, the given name of her paternal grandfather, which she used professionally from thereon.
In a retrospective interview, Russell commented on her casting with ambivalence, saying: "Sam [Spiegel] loved to be seen with child-girls on his arm. I was 16 years old and still living at home, and he took me to the Bistro and tried to stick his tongue down my throat. He thought he could buy and sell people." Kazan corroborated this, recalling: "Sam suggested her. I had strong reservations, saw some values but more drawbacks. It was obvious to me, and later conversations with Theresa verified this, that Sam had, for a long time, tried to gentle her into his bed." According to Russell, prior to shooting the film, Spiegel attempted to have her sign a contract placing her under his control for a nine-year period. Reflecting on the incident, Russell said:
The following year, Russell was cast as a troubled young woman who becomes associated with a criminal (played by Dustin Hoffman) in director Ulu Grosbard's drama Straight Time. Vincent Canby of The New York Times praised Russell in his review of the film, writing: "Miss Russell, who was so good in The Last Tycoon, is an extremely appealing actress, with a kind of contemporary authority, but she looks so classy, so understated-chic, that she suggests an upper-class girl whose path would cross Max's only at the beach, or maybe at a singles bar."
In 1979, Russell starred in the miniseries Blind Ambition for CBS, a biographical drama focusing on the Watergate scandal, in which she portrayed Maureen Dean, the wife of White House Counsel John Dean (played by Martin Sheen).
1980–1986: Collaborations with Nicolas Roeg
In 1979, Russell was cast as Milena Flaherty, a young American living in Vienna who enters a dysfunctional relationship with a psychoanalyst (played by Art Garfunkel) in Bad Timing (1980). It marked the first of six films Russell would go on to star in directed by English filmmaker Nicolas Roeg, whom she began a relationship with after completing filming. Bad Timing was subject to controversy upon release due to its graphic depiction of sexuality and rape, though Russell's performance was praised by critic Roger Ebert, who wrote: "If there is any reason to see this film, however, it is the performance by Theresa Russell (who was Dustin Hoffman's lover in Straight Time). She is only 22 or 23, and yet her performance is astonishingly powerful. She will be in better films, I hope, and is the only participant who need not be ashamed of this one." Russell became a muse of Roeg's, and the two were married in 1982.
Following her role in Bad Timing, Russell performed the English audio dubbing of Daria Nicolodi's character in the giallo film Tenebre (1982), directed by Dario Argento. Her next on-screen role was in Roeg's drama Eureka (1983), portraying the covetous daughter of a Klondike prospector, played by Gene Hackman. The film was a box-office bomb, grossing $123,572 against an $11 million budget and received mixed reviews from critics, though Roger Ebert praised Russell's performance as "brilliant."
The following year, she starred opposite Bill Murray in John Byrum's The Razor's Edge, an adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel of the same name. The film was a financial failure, grossing under $2 million against its $13 million budget. The film was met with largely unfavorable reviews, though Russell's performance received some praise, with Janet Maslin of The New York Times noting it as possessing "a welcome vitality."
She then portrayed Marilyn Monroe in Roeg's experimental alternate history film Insignificance (1985), based on the play by Terry Johnson, in which she appeared opposite Gary Busey and Tony Curtis. In retrospect, Russell described the role as "really challenging because at first I did not want to do it. That was a pile of horseshit I didn’t want to step in. Everybody had these preconceived ideas, and I didn’t want [to do] a caricature. That was kind of tricky to get my head around." Critic Roger Ebert praised her performance in the film, writing: "She doesn't really look very much like Monroe, but what does it matter? The blond hair and the red lips are there, and so is the manner, which has been imitated so often, and so badly, that the imitators prove that Monroe was a special case. Russell doesn't imitate. She builds her performance from the ground up, and it works to hold the movie together."
1987–1998: Mainstream recognition In 1987, Russell gained mainstream exposure for her portrayal of Catharine Peterson, a serial killer who seduces and murders wealthy men in Bob Rafelson's noir thriller Black Widow, co-starring Debra Winger. Russell's performance earned praise; Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that her "clear-eyed sweetness... adds unexpected dimension to the homicidal Catharine," while Roger Ebert praised her acting and screen chemistry with Winger.
The same year, she appeared in a Nicolas Roeg-directed segment (a film version of the opera Un ballo in maschera) of the anthology film Aria. The following year, she appeared in Roeg's black comedy Track 29 (1988), playing a young Southern woman who meets a mysterious British drifter, played by Gary Oldman. Roger Ebert, commenting on her performance, wrote: "Russell, who has survived the convoluted terrain of many of Roeg’s movies (he is her husband), seems at home in this twisted landscape, and [she and Oldman] work their characters up into an orgy of mutual laceration."
Next, Russell portrayed a public defender in the crime drama Physical Evidence (1988), starring Burt Reynolds and directed by Michael Crichton. The film received largely unfavorable reviews from critics, with some, such as Rita Kempley of The Washington Post, singling out Russell's acting as a primary fault. Roger Ebert, who had previously championed many of Russell's performances, suggested in his review of the film that she and Reynolds merely lacked chemistry.