Hollywood made me feel so ugly and depressed I thought about boob job, says Rachel Weisz as she reveals dark side of LA
SHE is an Oscar-winner married to a former James Bond, but Rachel Weisz says Hollywood made her feel so ugly she considered having plastic surgery.
When the British beauty first went there in the Nineties, she contemplated a nose job, boob job or liposuction to get noticed and boost her career.
Rachel, now 56 and one of the world’s most sought-after stars, said: “I went into quite a major depression.
“I was watching so many daytime TV shows. And then I would get in my car and drive to these auditions while listening to the radio.
“I feel sick now when I listen to the radio, all these commercials for different car dealers.
“I just felt like the world was so desperate and lonely and sad and people were trying to sell cars and no one wanted to buy them.
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“People are very focused on their own thing. In LA unless you’ve just won an Oscar or you’re ‘Mr Studio Head’, no one talks to you. Even at parties. I was at this big Hollywood party, and no one looked.
“Everyone is blinkered and they just kind of scan the room for anyone important. LA makes you feel ugly. Because if you’re an actress, no one pays you any attention.
“And you immediately start thinking, ‘God, I must have a nose job. Or, I must get that boob job, or I must get that lipo’, whatever it is.”
For Rachel, who started her career with bit-parts on Inspector Morse and whose new thriller Vladimir was released on Netflix on March 5, real success and happiness came when she turned her back on the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles.
She decided to split her time between London, where she grew up, and New York with her then-partner, director Darren Aronofsky, and their son Henry, now 19.
Rachel, who has been married to 007 actor Daniel Craig since 2011, told Index mag: “There’s not much room for eccentricity in Hollywood, and eccentricity is what’s sexy in people.
“I think London’s sexy because it’s so full of eccentrics.”
The actress’s breakthrough came in 1999 when she landed the role of feisty librarian Evelyn Carnahan in blockbuster The Mummy.
By 2006 her A-list status was cemented when she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Constant Gardener.
She went on to star in 2009’s The Lovely Bones and 2015’s Youth, as well as 2021 Marvel film Black Widow.
Now Vladimir sees her as married college professor M, whose life spirals into a steamy, all-consuming obsession with her younger colleague, played by One Day and White Lotus star Leo Woodall.
The series is based on the book of the same name by Julia May Jonas, which Rachel describes as a brilliant piece of writing.
She added of the character she plays: “I deeply empathise with her and understand her. But I left her when I got home.
“She’s like a projection of what a viewer might want to live out.”
Rachel and Daniel, who officially ended his 15-year stint as James Bond with No Time To Die in 2021, were friends for years before falling for each other in 2010 while filming thriller Dream House.
Within months they secretly wed in New York and went on to have daughter Grace, now seven. They split their time between Brooklyn in New York and Primrose Hill in North London.
But the couple deliberately choose not to do films together.
Rachel said: “I think we really love our private life as a life, as a family, and then we go to work separately.
“It means we can alternate, so I can stay home with the family while he works. We can swap out. If we’re both doing something at the same time, it’s probably less ideal.”
Rachel grew up in Hampstead, North London, with dad George, a Hungarian-Jewish mechanical engineer, and mum Edith, who originated from Austria and was a teacher-turned-psychotherapist.
The star started modelling at 14 and studied English at Cambridge University, with her parents hoping she would choose a more traditional career.
Rachel told the Sunday Sitdown With Willie Geist podcast: “They were just the kind of parents who were like, ‘You’ve got to get a degree, like you have to go to college’, which in the end I did.
“They wanted me to have a fall-back, so I could be a teacher . . . that would be a really good job.
“My parents would be really happy if I was a teacher. My dad was very sceptical about my career choice. I think he wasn’t very impressed by what I was doing.
“He was my harshest critic for a very long time. I think he only, after a good 15 years, was like, ‘OK, yeah’.
“He was tough — yeah, he was tough, in a good way. He was always honest, he didn’t make it nice. He’d take things apart and say, ‘I didn’t understand what you were doing,’ or, ‘That was a bit wooden’.”
But winning her Oscar changed everything.
Rachel said: “That definitely changed my life. Maybe my dad was like, ‘OK, all right, you were OK’.
“He would never be more over the top than that.”
And that Oscar meant she had the freedom to choose the roles she truly wanted, just like the one in Vladimir.
She said: “In the beginning of my career, I just did whatever job I got so I could pay the rent. I wasn’t picky.
“Now I’m in this luxurious position where I can choose things. It’s really about the character and writing, if it appeals to me or if it seems it would be interesting to pretend that story.
“I was never the kind of kid that got on the table and did a tap dance and a song. I wasn’t the star of the school plays or anything. I was actually really shy.
“I think a lot of actors, when I meet them as grown-ups, they go, ‘I was really shy too’.
“I think I’m just a daydreamer. I think storytelling is, in a way, daydreaming, but putting your daydreams into writing and getting people to embody them.
“I think my daydreaming skills have just come into it, I get paid for it.”
Despite now being praised for her stylish looks, ranging from velvet trouser suits to Valentino haute couture, walking the red carpet still makes Rachel nervous even today.
She said: “I don’t think any actress would say doing the red carpet is not terrifying. The way to get through it is to pretend.
“It’s a fantasy, like walking into a fantasy world. These people, they transform you, and that is fun.
“What you see on the red carpet is not a character that has anything to say.
“I used to be very shy, and in a way that was what was so great about the idea of acting. You can hide the real you behind that character.”
But after years of struggling with fame, Rachel says she has finally learned to be content with exactly where she is in life.
She said: “Someone once said to me when I was younger, ‘Never think the best party is somewhere else’. You know that feeling of being somewhere and thinking you should go somewhere better?
“You can’t do that. Wherever you are is the right place to be.”
