Embeth Davidtz Biography

Embeth Davidtz Jean professionally known as Embeth Davidtz is an American actress. Her screen roles include movies such as Army of Darkness, Schindler’s List, Matilda, Junebug, Mansfield Park, Bicentennial Man, and Fracture, and the television series Californication and Mad Men.

Before attending college courses in South Africa, she had to learn Afrikaans where her dad took up a teaching post at the University of Potchefstroom. She graduated from Pretoria’s Glen High School in 1983 and studied at Grahamstown’s Rhodes University. She has Dutch, English, and French ancestry.

At the age of 21, she created her acting debut with CAPAB (Cape Performing Arts Board, now known as Artscape) in Cape Town, playing Juliet in the Maynardville Open-Air Theater stage production of Romeo and Juliet. She also performed in English and Afrikaans and starred in other local plays, including Stille Nag (Silent Night) and A Chain of Voices.

In 1988, her film debut came with a small role in South African-filmed American horror Mutator. Briefly after, she won a bigger part in South African short telemovie A Private Life, as the daughter of an interracial couple. She won a DALRO Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the 1990 play Houd-den-bek. For the same play, she was nominated in 1991 for the Esther Roos Award for Best Actress in a Supporting role in Afrikaans film. She was noticed by Steven Spielberg on her performance in the 1992 South African film, Nag van die Negentiende and offered her the role of Helen Hirsch in Schindler’s List.

Embeth Davidtz

Hollywood

In 1993, she acted the role of Helen Hirsch in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. In the first 1995, she had a central role in the fact-based film Murder in the First followed by the Merchant-Ivory production Feast of July (also 1995). In Matilda (1996), a feature based on Roald Dahl’s children’s fantasy, she played the role of Miss Honey, the grade-one teacher of the title character.

She played a theologian helping Denzel Washington crack a supernatural wave of crimes in the mystery drama Fallen and a femme fatale linked to Kenneth Branagh in Robert Altman’s take on a previously unused John Grisham manuscript, The Gingerbread Man in (1998). The next year, she portrayed a 19th-century woman of the world in Patricia Rozema’s reworking of the Jane Austen comedy Mansfield Park and acted a dual role opposite Robin Williams in the futuristic fable Bicentennial Man.

An assisting role in the film adaptation of Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001) saw Davidtz play Natasha, a colleague and one of the love interests of Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). That same year, she began her run on the CBS drama Citizen Baines, playing the daughter of a defeated United States Senate incumbent (James Cromwell) who is herself leaning towards a career in politics. Various roles included horror thrillers like 2001’s Thir13en Ghosts alongside Tony Shalhoub. She appeared in the Michael Hoffman drama The Emperor’s Club, which co-starred Kevin Kline and Emile Hirsch in 2002.

In Junebug (2005), she played an outsider art dealer from Chicago brought to North Carolina by her husband (Alessandro Nivola) to meet his family for the first time. Also, she has guest-starred on the hit ABC drama series Grey’s Anatomy as Dr. Derek Shepherd’s sister Nancy in the Season 3 episode “Let the Angels Commit”. She had a regular role on HBO’s In Treatment as Amy, part of a fractious couple alongside Josh Charles’s Jake in 2008.

In the 2007 drama Fracture, she portrayed the unfaithful and unfortunate wife of Anthony Hopkins’s character.

She played Rebecca Pryce, wife of Lane Pryce, in the hit AMC television show Mad Men from 2009 to 2012. She as well played Felicia Koons, the wife of the dean and the mother of Becca’s best friend, Chelsea, on Showtime’s Californication.

She played Annika Blomkvist in David Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She as well appeared in Marc Webb’s Spider-Man reboot The Amazing Spider-Man as Mary Parker, Peter Parker’s mother who vanished under mysterious circumstances along with Richard Parker.

Embeth Davidtz Age|Birth sign

She was born on August 11, 1965, in Lafayette, Indiana, United States. Her birth sign is Leo and as of 2019, she is 54 years old.

Embeth Davidtz Nationality

She has dual American and South African citizenship.

Embeth Davidtz Family

Her relatives were South Africans with ancestry from the Netherlands, English and French, Jean and John Davidtz. Before returning to the indigenous nation of her parents, where her dad was a college teacher, the family relocated to Trenton, New Jersey. Her siblings are Asher Dylan Sloane and Charlotte Emily Sloane

Embeth Davidtz Husband | Children

Davidtz married entertainment attorney Jason Sloane on June 22, 2002. The family is blessed with two children. She has a younger sister who is a psychologist at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Embeth Davidtz Breast Cancer

On a Sunday night, Embeth Davidtz revealed her partially reconstructed right breast on an episode of Ray Donovan. Diagnosed with Stage-3 cancer in 2013, the actress underwent chemotherapy, immunological treatment, lymph-node-removal surgery, and a double mastectomy. She now has a clean bill of health, and before this, she’s never spoken publicly about her real-life battle.

When Ray Donovan executive producer David Hollander called her about a major guest role in the Showtime drama’s fourth season as Sonia Kovitzky, an art dealer who serves as a front for drug-dealing Russian pimps, he informed her the role would require nudity. Together, they forged a storyline that incorporated Davidtz’s semi-restored physique, as breast-cancer survivor Sonia disrobes to seduce Liev Schreiber’s titular Hollywood fixer, whose wife also has the disease.

Davidtz admits she’s unsure how viewers will react to the sex scene and to this very personal interview. “I had this feeling just before I called you that I was about to jump off a cliff,” she says with a laugh. “It’s been such a separation of church and state, this very private thing among friends and family. It was one step to film it, but now it’s another one talking about it.

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Embeth Davidtz Film

Year                            Title

• 1992     Army of Darkness
• 1993     Schindler’s List
• 1995     Murder in the First
• 1995     Feast of July
• 1996     Matilda
• 1998     Fallen
  The Gingerbread Man
• 1999       Simon Magus
  Mansfield Park
  Bicentennial Man
• 2001          Bridget Jones’s Diary
  The Hole
  Thir13en Ghosts
• 2002           The Emperor’s Club
• 2005          Junebug
• 2007              Fracture
• 2009            Fragments
• 2010            3 Backyards
• 2011             The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• 2012           The Amazing Spider-Man
• 2013            Paranoia
  Europa Report
  Miracle Rising: South Africa
• 2014            The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Embeth Davidtz Television

Year                                 Title

• 1989            Screen Two
• 1992             Till Death Us Do Part
  Deadly Matrimony
• 1997           The Garden of Redemption
• 1998            Last Rites
• 2001              Citizen Baines
• 2002              Shackleton
• 2004              Scrubs
• 2006, 2019           Grey’s Anatomy
• 2008               In Treatment
• 2009              Californication
• 2009–2012                Mad Men
• 2015              The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe
• 2016               Ray Donovan
• 2019            The Morning Show