Like many of Wright's characters, Jenny is a tortured soul who suffers from drug addiction and depression but has a wild spirit and cannot be contained.

Her next role would be a big one: She played Jenny in Forrest Gump, a film that became a huge hit and has remained an enduring moviegoer favorite.

She turned down the role of Maid Marian in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves due to her pregnancy but came back for The Playboys, an Irish film. While shooting the film, she fell in love with her costar, Sean Penn, and became pregnant shortly thereafter with the pair's first daughter, Dylan Frances, followed soon by their son, Hopper Jack. Determined not to let her blond hair or good looks get in the way of more complex roles, she turned down one-dimensional, passive female parts in blockbusters like Jurassic Park and Batman Forever in favor of a much darker role in State of Grace, a gritty 1990 film about Irish gangsters. A year after the film's release, Wright divorced her first husband of two years, Dane Witherspoon.ĭespite the success of The Princess Bride, Wright was ambitious and did not want to be typecast early on as a victimized damsel character actor. An iconic film that resonated with children and adults alike, The Princess Bride launched Wright to stardom her winning performance as Princess Buttercup suddenly transformed her into a bona fide film actor at the age of 21. This drew the attention of director Rob Reiner, who decided to audition her for the lead role in his new film, an irreverent 1987 take on Robin Hood-style swashbuckler films called The Princess Bride. Though she lacked any formal acting training and often shot her scenes the same day she received a script, with no rehearsal, Wright earned three Daytime Emmy nominations for her work on the show. Then that idea was sort of usurped from my life because we moved to San Diego.' Big Break & Career HighlightsĪfter high school, Wright was encouraged to act by her modeling agent and landed a lead part on the soap opera Santa Barbara. 'I was really convinced that I was going to go to New York and be onstage in A Chorus Line. 'I think the inception of my interest in arts was when I was around 9 or 10 and I started dancing, she says. Even though, as a teenager, Wright was elected homecoming queen and had a successful modeling career, she was actually more interested in dancing than being photographed.

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