Highlights
- Jennifer Jason Leigh's personal life, including her sister's death and her difficult relationship with her father, has greatly influenced her career as an actress.
- Despite facing tragedy and loss, Leigh has never stopped working and genuinely loves acting.
- Leigh's passion for the magic of movies has been a driving force in her career, allowing her to pour herself into her art and achieve remarkable success.
The cast of Fast Times At Ridgemont High is rich now, and Jennifer Jason Leigh has had an incredible career as a result of the popular '80s movie. Although she might not be in the public eye as much as she once was, she has never stopped working and seems to genuinely adore acting.
While everyone knows her as Stacy Hamilton from Fast Times, Jennifer Jason Leigh's personal life hasn't always been as publicized. Fans know that Leigh had her son Rohmer at 48 years old. But not everyone knows that she experienced two deaths in her family, and these terrible moments shaped her.
Jennifer Jason Leigh's Sister Carrie Ann Morrow Struggled Before Her Tragic Death
Jennifer Jason Leigh's marriage to Noah Baumbach became the inspiration for his hit movie Marriage Story. Fans are familiar with their relationship and divorce since the film brought it out into the spotlight again. But while this divorce played out in front of the world, Leigh hasn't talked about her sister's death quite as much.
When Leigh's sister Carrie Ann Morrow died, this definitely affected Leigh and was a terrible thing to have to go through. While she doesn't talk much about her sister, she mentioned in a few interviews that Morrow was addicted to substances.
In an interview with Another Mag, Leigh said that Morrow went to several different rehabs. In an interview with The Guardian, she said that Morrow died at the age of 58 in 2016. She explained, "A lot of my pull towards acting was trying to understand my sister."
Jennifer Jason Leigh saw steady success throughout her life, and her sister's death is one tragedy that must have always been there in the background. After playing Stacy Hamilton in Fast Times At Ridgemont High, she starred in popular movies like Single White Female, Miami Blues, and Last Exit To Brooklyn. In recent years, she starred in the horror movies The Woman in the Window and Possessor.
In 2021, Leigh discussed her characters in an interview with Salon.com. She explained that she can't always see herself in the people that she plays and she is fine with that. It sounds like there is a contrast between the way that she lives her life and the roles that she is attracted to.
Leigh told Salon.com, "I am so different than the characters I play usually. I feel like I'm straightforward, I'm introverted. I don't like drama in my life, I like it in movies."
Jennifer Jason Leigh Had A Tough Relationship With Her Father Vic Morrow Before He Died
Jennifer Jason Leigh's mother, Barbara Turner, was an actress who starred in a variety of movies but also wrote screenplays, including for the movies Pollock and The Affair. Her father, Vic Morrow, became famous for playing Sergeant "Chip" Saunders on the TV series Combat!
In 1982, Vic Morrow died on a movie set. According to History.com, he and two actors who were kids at the time, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shinn Chen, were taking a helicopter on the set of The Twilight Zone: The Movie.
The crash is terrifying to hear about. While the actors were standing on set and supposed to be recreating a storyline from the Vietnam War, a helicopter came toward them, and they all died.
According to UPI.com, Jennifer Jason Leigh and her sister Carrie Ann Morrow sued for wrongful death. Their lawyer Sydney Irmas explained, "We contend the use of airplanes in close proximity to people and pyrotechnics are such that a person has to have all their faculties,' attorney Sydney Irmas said Wednesday. 'You can't have your senses dulled. We are informed and believe that certain people in responsible positions (on the movie set) were ingesting alcohol or drugs."
Leigh was only 20 years old at the time. Her mother and father hadn't been together in a long time. According to New York Magazine, they had been divorced since she was a toddler and her mother married her second husband, Reza Badiyi.
While losing a parent is always terrible, several sources say that Leigh and her father never got along. It doesn't sound like she had any kind of relationship with him.
The actress shared a little bit about her father when speaking to Phoebe Cates for Interview Magazine. She said, "My dad [Vic Morrow] was a great actor, and people loved him very much, so this is something I’ve never spoken about."
Before her father passed away, Leigh learned that her parents had an abusive marriage. She explained, "It was horrific but true. She never wanted me to know—she didn’t want to poison me against him. I was 2 when it happened. He told me he put her in the hospital, and he told me this on my 14th birthday. Perhaps it was his attempt to have a closer relationship with me, but obviously it backfired."
While Jennifer Jason Leigh had a lot of pain in her family, she was exposed to the idea of acting when she was young. She really liked the idea of acting for a living. While no one can ever forget losing two family members in such horrible ways, Leigh has poured herself into her art and has had a remarkable career.
In an interview with The Frame, Leigh talked about loving movies from a young age. She said, "Because acting is such an odd world, I also grew up as a child of actors and writers. My mom's a screenwriter and before that she was an actress, and my father was an actor, my step-father was a director so I was on sets a lot as a kid. I loved the magic of the set. You walk in and it's a living room and you walk outside and it's just a piece of wood held up by another piece of wood. There's a lot of magic involved in movies that as a child I really appreciated."
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