Rosanna Arquette (born August 10, 1959) is an American actress. She was born in New York City. Her grandfather, Cliff, played "Charlie Weaver" on The Jack Paar Show and Hollywood Squares, and her father, Lewis, was well known as "J. W. Pickett" on The Waltons. She is the sibling of entertainers Patricia Arquette, David Arquette and Alexis Arquette, and the sister-in-law of Courtney Cox Arquette.
Arquette followed her family's profession and began acting while being a child. When she was 11 years old, her parents moved to a commune in Virginia. Arquette did not do well at school. At the age of 14 she went to Los Angeles, California, wanting to become a film star. In Hollywood, she had her first roles playing teens with troubles. A few years later she started to act in mature roles. Besides cinema movies, Arquette played from the beginning of her career also in television films. In 1982, she earned an Emmy Award nomination for the TV film The Executioner's Song. Thereafter, she played in many cinema movies and TV films. In 1989, Martin Scorsese offered her a part in New York Stories. Since then, Arquette has appeared, with few exceptions, in one or in several movies each year, some of them of notable interest, like Pulp Fiction and Crash.
In her private life, she has always been torn between work and familiy. Her dedication to acting has broken several relationships. The first was her boyfriend Steven Porcaro, member of the rock band Toto. Her marriage in 1986 to composer James Newton Howard ended in the same way. The liaison with an old love of Arquette, English pop and rock star Peter Gabriel, proved also to be impossible. At that time, Arquette's parents divorced. Soon later her mother developed breast cancer. Deeply hurt, Arquette married restaurateur John Sidel in 1993. One year later their daughter Zoe Blue was born. Arquette went on working intensively, being often away from home. The tensions this created, and the death of her mother, led the couple to divorce.
More recently, Arquette found energies to spend time with her daughter and to become breast cancer advocate, while continuing with her work, now also as a director.
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