Judy Davis Movies
Known for her intense intelligence and the range of unconventional characters she has brought to life, Australian actress Judy Davis has had a fairly brilliant career. Born in Perth, Western Australia, on April 23, 1955, Davis rebelled against her Catholic upbringing by leaving home at the age of 17 to join a rock band, which toured across Asia for six months. Upon her return to Australia, she soon gave up her singing career to attend the Western Australia Institute of Technology and then concentrated on another branch of performing at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. At NIDA she trained with the likes of Mel Gibson, with whom she starred in a school production of Romeo and Juliet.In her subsequent stage work, Davis gravitated toward characters whose significant traits alternated between steel-like strength and vacillating vulnerability: She played the title roles in Lulu and Piaf. In films from 1977, Davis ascended to stardom as Sybilla Melvin in director Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career (1979), a performance that won her several awards, including the Australian and British equivalents of the Oscar. She was likewise showered with industry and film-festival honors for her work in Hoodwink (1981), The Winter of Our Dreams (1982), Heatwave (1982), and Kangaroo (1984), appearing in the latter film with her husband, Colin Friels. She was nominated for an Emmy for her portrayal of young Golda Meir in the TV miniseries A Woman Called Golda (1982), and earned her first Oscar nomination for her interpretation of the enigmatic Adela Quested in David Lean's A Passage to India in 1984.
Described by one colleague as "the patron saint of modern emotions," Davis has never done anything by halves: She was a lusty George Sand in Impromptu (1991), the junkie wife of William Lee in Naked Lunch (1991), a bibulous, self-destructive Hollywood ghostwriter in Barton Fink (1991), an overbearing ex-spouse in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives (1992) (the second of her Oscar-nominated turns), and a hostage from Hell in The Ref (1994). Davis' films during the second half of the '90s were marked by a notably uneven quality, and she could be seen in everything from the wildly idiosyncratic Children of the Revolution (1996) to some other disappointing collaborations with Allen, Deconstructing Harry (1997) and Celebrity (1998).
In 1999, Davis received another Emmy nomination for her work in Dash and Lilly, in which she starred as Lillian Hellman opposite Sam Shepard as Dashiell Hammett. Nonetheless, that particular award eluded her grasp.
During the first few years of the new millennium, Davis stepped down and maintained a somewhat lower profile than in prior years, placing a much greater emphasis on telemovies than she had in the nineties, and limiting herself to lower-profile theatrical features. She gleaned positive notices - and won a Golden Globe - for her portrayal of the adult Judy Garland in the telemovie Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (2001), opposite Hugh Laurie and Victor Garber.
Two years later, Davis received yet another Golden Globe nomination (her fifth nod, including the Garland win) for her portrayal of Nancy Reagan (opposite James Brolin as Ronald) in the unexpectedly controversial TV biopic The Reagans.
A few scattered theatrical features highlighted this period, such as the twin 2001 releases The Man Who Sued God and Susan Seidelman's Gaudi Afternoon. Davis then joined the ensembles of two A-list features in 2006. The Jennifer Aniston-Vince Vaughn vehicle The Break-Up - a comedy about the constant sparring between a couple of live-in lovers - hit cinemas in June 2006 to mixed critical receptions, and struck gold at the box, doubtless riding high on the popularity of its twin leads. In the picture, Davis plays Marilyn Dean, Aniston's slave-driving boss at an art gallery. In that same year's hotly-anticipated but underperforming Marie Antoinette, Davis put her inimitably chilly stamp on the role of La Comtesse de Noailles.
She appeared in the miniseries The Starter Wife, and in 2011 she co-starred opposite Geoffrey Rush in the drama The Eye of the Storm and appeared in the well-reviewed spy film Page Eight. In 2012 she reteamed with Woody Allen for the first time in nearly fifteen years, appearing in his Italian comedy To Rome With Love.
Judy Davis married Scotch actor Colin Friels (A Good Man in Africa) in 1984. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
One of Woody Allen's most seemingly biographical films, Husbands and Wives opens with upper-middle class Manhattan couple Sally (Judy Davis) and Jack (Sydney Pollack) announcing to their best friends, the Roths, that they are splitting up. Gabe Roth (Allen) and his wife Judy (Mia Farrow) are taken aback by their casual revelation. Jack begins dating his dim, but sexy, aerobics instructor and Sally starts up a tentative romance with Michael (Liam Neeson). Gabe and Judy begin analyzing their marriage, discovering that they might not be meant to stay together. English professor Gabe begins a serious flirtation with a student of his named Rain (Juliette Lewis) and Judy begins to have feelings for Michael. Eventually, Sally and Jack reconcile, but have not improved their relationship. Gabe and Judy end up going their separate ways. Husbands and Wives was seemingly influenced by Ingmar Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
- Starring:
- Woody Allen, Judy Davis, (more)
A wealthy, upper-class British widow marries a much younger Italian man with disastrous results in this turn-of-the-century costume drama based on the E.M. Forster novel. After marrying into a wealthy family and then losing her husband, middle-aged Lilia Herriton (Helen Mirren) suffers under the disapproving yoke of her haughty mother-in-law (Barbara Jefford). At the suggestion of family friend Caroline Abbott (Helena Bonham Carter), Lilia leaves her young daughter and in-laws for a holiday in Italy, where she falls in love with the penniless but handsome Gino Carella (Giovanni Guidelli). When she announces her plans to marry Gino, the family dispatches her brother-in-law, Philip (Rupert Graves), to prevent the union. But the alternately caddish and thoughtful Philip fails in his mission. Gino proves to be as charming to other women as he is to his wife, but he's genuinely bereaved when she dies in childbirth. Soon, Philip and his high-strung sister, Harriet (Judy Davis), arrive in Tuscany in an attempt to spirit away Lilia's son. But the principled Caroline turns up, determined to stop them, setting the stage for unexpected realizations and unforeseeable tragedy. Where Angels Fear to Tread reunites Bonham Carter and Graves, who co-starred in the previous E.M. Forster adaptation, A Room With a View. Each actor also starred in other Forster films: Bonham Carter in Howards End and Graves in Maurice. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi
- Starring:
- Helena Bonham Carter, Judy Davis, (more)
- 1991
- PG
This award-winning TV production tells the true story of a heroic woman's underground operation to spirit Allied soldiers out of Nazi-occupied France. Her name is Mary Lindell, a British-born Red Cross nurse living in France with her two teenage children, Maurice and Barbé, by Lindell's marriage to Count de Melville. The story begins in Paris in 1940 when a downed British flier, Maj. James Legatt (Sam Neill), stumbles to a table at a sidewalk cafe. Dressed in a shin-to-shoulder overcoat and dizzy with fatigue, he plops into a chair. At a table nearby, Lindell (Judy Davis) notices his boots -- British issue and a dead giveaway. When German soldiers approach the flier, Lindell walks to his table and slaps him smartly, pretending he is her drunken husband. The ruse works. Lindell then takes Legatt to her home in a taxi and nurses him to health. During their time together, they fall in love -- chastely, without overtly disclosing their affection for each other. Using her feminine wiles and forceful personality to bamboozle SS hounds, she effects his escape back to England, then dedicates herself to rescuing other allies. All goes well until a flier botches his escape. An investigation and trial send Lindell to prison for nine months, which she barely survives. After her release, her son and daughter hide her and restore her to health, and Lindell goes back to work smuggling Allies across the border -- this time with the aid of a priest (Denholm Elliot) and Maj. Legatt, who tracks her activities from his headquarters in England. She eventually ends up in the Ravensbrück concentration camp north of Berlin, and in the conclusion of the production, viewers learn the ultimate fate of Lindell and Legatt. ~ Mike Cummings, Rovi
- Starring:
- Judy Davis, Sam Neill, (more)
The title character, played by John Turturro, is a Broadway playwright, based on Clifford Odets, lured to Hollywood with the promise of untold riches by a boorish studio chieftain (played by Michael Lerner as a combination of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn). Despising the film capital and everything it stands for, Barton Fink comes down with an acute case of writer's block. He is looked after by a secretary (Judy Davis) who has been acting as a ghost writer for an alcoholic screenwriter (John Mahoney, playing a character based on William Faulkner). Also keeping tabs on Fink is a garrulous traveling salesman (John Goodman), the most likeable, stable character in the picture. And then comes the plot twist to end all plot twists, plunging Barton Fink into a surreal nightmare that would make Hieronymus Bosch look like a house painter. Once more, Ethan and Joel Coen serve up a smorgasbord of quirkiness and kinkiness, where nothing is what it seems and nothing turns out as planned. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- John Turturro, John Goodman, (more)
This cinematic/literary hybrid fuses motifs from Beat writer William S. Burroughs's novel of the same name with elements of the author's biography and plenty of the cerebral alienation and biomorphic special effects fans of creepy cult director David Cronenberg have come to expect. Bill Lee (Peter Weller) wants to write, but he exterminates bugs to pay the bills. His wife, Joan (Judy Davis), becomes addicted to Bill's bug powder dust, and soon he joins her in a world of unorthodox hallucinogens; he visits the kindly yet sinister Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider) and walks away with his first dose of the black meat -- a narcotic made from the flesh of the giant aquatic Brazilian centipede. Soon, monstrous beetles are whispering conspiracy theories in Bill's ears and his nebbish writer friends Hank (Nicholas Campbell) and Martin (Michael Zelniker) are sleeping with Joan under his nose. When a party trick involving a liquor glass and a gun goes awry, killing Joan, Bill flees to Interzone, a Mediterranean city full of talking insectoid typewriters, double agents, offbeat aesthetes, and plots within plots. As he navigates this paranoid landscape, Bill begins ingesting another drug called mugwump jism and writes fragments that Hank and Martin soon assemble into a novel under the title Naked Lunch. As beat literature aficionados know, Interzone is based on Tangiers -- the city where Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch. The incident in the film in which Hank and Martin appropriate Bill's writing and have it published closely approximates the real-life circumstances of the novel's publication, although it was Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac who helped out the real-life Burroughs. The William Tell incident that kills Bill's wife is also drawn from the author's real life. "William Lee" is both Burroughs' literary stand-in and the name under which he published his first autobiographical novel Junky. Ian Holm, who plays Joan Frost's husband, Tom, would appear in Cronenberg's similarly experimental eXistenZ several years later. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi
- Starring:
- Peter Weller, Judy Davis, (more)
- 1990
- PG13
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Woody Allen's character study of a well-kept, upscale Manhattan woman (Mia Farrow) takes the title character on a journey through a Wonderland of her own making, in which she learns some truths about herself, her relationships, and the universe in general. Alice leads a comfortable life, except for some nagging aches and pains, but when she visits the mysterious Dr. Yang (Keye Luke), he discovers that what really ails Alice is her own lack of true human experience. Alice has been married for sixteen years to Doug (William Hurt), an emotionally detached stockbroker, and she lives a perfectly maintained life in a perfectly maintained apartment, with a pair of children and the requisite support staff. All that changes when a chance meeting with a neighbor (Joe Mantegna) leads Alice to consider an affair. Dr. Yang, seizing the opportunity, gives Alice herbal potions that make her both invisible and seductive, allowing her to free herself from her inhibitions. Plunging into her new fantasy world, Alice ultimately comes to terms with her family, her husband, and her life. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi
- Starring:
- Mia Farrow, Joe Mantegna, (more)
Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, better known in the literary world as George Sand, not only took a man's name, but trotted around wearing pants and smoking cigars in public. No great shakes today, but in the 1800s she was perhaps the most famous (or infamous) woman in the world. One of the first original celebrities, aside from her garb and literary output, she was known to inspire many duels and broken hearts among other famous hedonist artists. One character describes her in Impromptu, as "that graveyard." The film engages in a sexual roundelay among Sand's (Judy Davis) many friends -- Eugene Delacroix (Ralph Brown), Alfred DeMusset (Mandy Patinkin), Franz Liszt (Julian Sands), and Frederick Chopin (Hugh Grant). The entire crew heads off to the summer estate of the Duke and Duchess d'Antan (Anton Rodgers and Emma Thompson), invited there by the culture-vulture hosts. Sand takes a bead on the sickly Chopin and spends her time throwing herself at him. Also on hand is Liszt's mistress Marie d'Agoult (Bernadette Peters) and Felicien Mallefille (Georges Corraface), Sand's recently jilted lover. Mallefille is jealous of any of the other guests who glance in Sand's direction and continually challenges them to duels. Marie, on the other hand, is enlisted by Sand to deliver a note to Chopin. But Marie, jealous of Sand, delivers the note substituting her name for Sand's. And as the weekend continues, the sexual merry-go-round continues at full tilt. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- Judy Davis, Hugh Grant, (more)
- 1988
The limitless talents of British actress Judy Davis are generously displayed throughout Georgia. Davis plays a dual role, as Nina, a brilliant attorney and (in flashbacks) Georgia, the attorney's mother. Haunted by her mother's long-ago death by drowning, Nina reopens the investigation. What she learns not only jeopardizes her relationships with several loved ones, but also puts her own life in peril. Perhaps too intense for some viewers, Georgia is nonetheless deserving of a wider audience than it originally received in 1988. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Judy Davis, John Bach, (more)
- 1987
- PG13
Gillian Armstrong directed this powerful and moving film containing a brilliant performance by Judy Davis. The story takes place in the small New South Wales seaside village of Eden. Davis is Lillie, who is renting a run-down trailer as she waits for her car to be repaired. One night, when Lillie is drunk and cannot walk from the toilet block back to her trailer, a teenage girl, Ally (Claudia Karvan) -- who lives with her free-spirited grandmother Bet (Jan Adele) in another trailer in the trailer park -- helps her back home. Lillie and Ally become good friends, and it is only when Lillie finally meets Bet that she realizes that Ally is, in fact, her own daughter, who she abandoned years earlier after the death of her husband. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- Judy Davis, Jan Adele, (more)
- 1986
A middle-aged dentist who is frustrated and bored with his commonplace life looks for greater adventure. This appeared on the PBS "American Playhouse." ~ Rovi
- 1986
- PG
Tim Burstall directed this adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's semi-autobiographical novel recalling his experiences in Australia in the early 1920s. The film, set at the height of World War I, begins at the English coastal home of writer Richard Somers (Colin Friels) and his German-born wife Harriet (Judy Davis). Since Somers is a conscientious objector and his wife is the nationality of the enemy, the British police pay him a visit. Somers is then drafted and undergoes a humiliating physical examination at the draft board. Seeing harassment in the air, Somers and his wife decide to leave England for the relative calm of Australia, where their neighbors are a pair of earthy suburbanites, Vicki (Julie Nihil) and Jack Calcott (John Walton). Jack, disillusioned by the war, has joined a fascist paramilitary group called the Diggers, led by a wealthy old general with the code name "Kangaroo" (Hugh Keays-Byrne). The Diggers want to stifle the emerging union movement in the country, and Kangaroo hopes to enlist Richard in the cause because "a country does not exist until it has found a voice." But Somers finds himself torn between opposing camps, since the Socialist trade unionists also want to utilize his writing skills for their own ends, looking for Somers to help them carry through "a partnership between poetry and power." ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- Colin Friels, Judy Davis, (more)
- 1986
In an informative and shocking documentary that bangs America's dormant collective conscience on its head, director Lorraine Gray films underpaid foreign workers around the world to highlight the exploitative nature of American companies willing to pay next to nothing in wages in order to raise their profits. Workers in countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, and the Philippines are paid as low as 5% of the hourly wage in the U.S. Meanwhile, corporate executives justify their practices with ignorant platitudes, while American laborers -- such as those in the Tennessee town abandoned by the Philips Corporation -- are joining the growing ranks of the unemployed. Filipino workers are unhappy with their working conditions (not exactly union standards) and of course would like to have decent wages. Missing are some statistics on how many jobs have been lost in the U.S. and how many jobs created in Third-World countries, as the balance continues to tip away from U.S. workers.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
A Passage to India, director David Lean's final film (for which he also received editing credit), breaks no new ground cinematically, but remains an exquisitely assembled harkback to such earlier Lean epics as Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter. Based on the novel by E. M. Forster, the film is set in colonial India in 1924. Adela Quested (Judy Davis), a sheltered, well-educated British woman, arrives in the town of Chandrapore, where she hopes to experience "the real India". Here she meets and befriends Dr. Aziz (Victor Banerjee), who, despite longstanding racial and social taboos, moves with relative ease and freedom amongst highborn British circles. Feeling comfortable with Adela, Aziz invites her to accompany him on a visit to the Marabar caves. Adela has previously exhibited bizarre, almost mystical behavior during other ventures into the Indian wilderness: this time, she emerges from the caves showing signs of injury and ill usage. To Aziz' horror, he is accused by Adela of raping her. Typically, the British ruling class rallies to Adela's defense, virtually convicting Aziz before the trial ever begins. Though he is eventually acquitted due to lack of evidence (in fact, director Lean never shows us what really happened), Aziz is ruined in the eyes of both the British and his own people-as is Adela. Woven into these proceedings is a subplot involving Adela's elderly travelling companion Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft), who through a series of plot twists too complex to describe here becomes a heroine of the Indian Independence movement. A Passage to India was nominated for several Academy Awards, scoring wins in the categories of Best Supporting Actress (Peggy Ashcroft) and Best Original Score (Maurice Jarre). A theatrical version of A Passage to India, written by Santha Rama Rau, was previously adapted for television by the BBC in the mid-1970s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Judy Davis, Victor Banerjee, (more)
- 1982
Windsor is a peaceful town on the Thames where hardly a leaf falls to disturb the silence. And then England's most notorious mischief maker, Sir John Falstaff (Richard Griffiths), arrives from London with his hooligans -- Bardolph (Gordon Gostelow), Nym (Michael Robbins), and Pistol (Nigel Terry) -- to steal and make merry. After breaking into a lodge and killing a deer on private land, they arouse the wrath of the locals. But quick tongues and pleadings of innocence exonerate them and even earn Falstaff a meal at the home of George Page (Bryan Marshall), a Windsor gentleman. There, Falstaff converses with Mrs. Page (Prunella Scales) and her neighbor, Mrs. Ford (Judy Davis), both of whom rule the purse strings of their households. Falstaff then decides to woo both women and charm them free of their money. But after he writes them a love letter -- the same letter word-for-word except for the name of the addressee -- the two "merry wives" compare letters and decide to give Sir John his comeuppance. Meanwhile, Mr. Ford (Ben Kingsley) gets wind of Falstaff's designs on his wife and, riven with jealousy, plots to surprise Falstaff when he comes calling. Scenes ensue in which Mr. Ford bursts through his front door in an attempt to discover Falstaff. The tee-heeing wives couldn't be happier, for these occasions give them a chance to humiliate Falstaff -- once by having him hide in a laundry basket which is dumped in the muddy Thames and another time by dressing as "the fat woman of Brentford." A subplot follows three men as they woo Mrs. Page's lovely daughter, Anne (Miranda Foster). In the end, Falstaff acknowledges his bad behavior, Anne Page gets her man, and good feelings abound. ~ Mike Cummings, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ben Kingsley
- 1982
- R
Heatwave is the mildly interesting story of a woman's attempt to stop a redevelopment plot which she thought was the cover-up for fraud and other criminal activity. Kate (Judy Davis), through her own efforts, manages to find some evidence to support her claims and also have a romance. Davis gives an energetic performance as the crusading woman, but the script lacks a convincing plot or characters. While it has some good moments, Heatwave is primarily notable because it was one of the earlier efforts of Australian director Phillip Noyce, who went on to make the very exciting Dead Calm. ~ Linda Rasmussen, Rovi
- Starring:
- Judy Davis, Richard Moir, (more)
- 1982
In this Australian film, the married, financially secure Rob (Bryan Brown) meets up with drug-addicted prostitute Lou (Judy Davis) and tries to help her crawl out of the dead-end life she's created for herself. However, when Rob's wife discovers who he's been spending his time with, his marriage and his stable life are threatened. ~ Iotis Erlewine, Rovi
- 1982
- R
Released in the U.S. under the title The Final Option, this action thriller was produced and set in Great Britain. The British Special Air Services, an anti-terrorist group, is pitted against an organization of international terrorists who plan to take over the U.S. Embassy in London and hold everyone hostage. Captain Skellen (Louis Collins), a member of the Special Air Services, assumes a false identity in order to infiltrate the terrorists, who are rogue members of the anti-nuclear-weapons movement -- and uncover their plans. Judy Davis appears as Frankie, a key member of the anti-nuclear group. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi
- Starring:
- Lewis Collins, Judy Davis, (more)
- 1981
Hoodwink is based on the true story of an Australian con artist who briefly won the hearts of the media (if not the authorities). John Hargreaves stars as a criminal serving time in a New South Wales prison. He's not partial to the physical labor required of the convicts, so he hits upon a labor-saving plan. Hargreaves pretends to be totally blind, thus lightening his work load....and carries off the hoax for years. Hoodwink is likely to get some cable-TV play in the near future thanks to the presence in the cast of the young Judy Davis. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- John Hargreaves, Judy Davis, (more)
Both actress Judy Davis and director Gillian Armstrong made a big splash on the international scene with this charming Australian film that examines late 19th century Australian society from the perspective of a headstrong woman who refuses to follow convention. The film charts the developing self-awareness of Sybylla Melvyn (Judy Davis) as she grows from an insecure tomboy to a self-assured woman. Sybylla wants to be a writer and stuns her family and friends by her insistence on following her dream. Despite the objections of her family acquaintances, she rejects the marriage proposal from the rich Harry Beecham (Sam Neill) to continue going her own way, in spite of the odds stacked against her in a repressive Victorian environment. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- Judy Davis, Sam Neill, (more)
- 1977
In this Australian action comedy, Texas and Alby (Joseph Bottoms and Grigor Taylor) mostly work as roustabouts at carnivals, but they are bored with the kind of work they do and take to the road together, looking for some fun and adventure. They are picked up in a beautiful green Corvette owned by a well-heeled man named Arnold (John Clayton). When Arnold starts putting the romantic moves on Alby, he and his buddy beat the driver up and steal his wallet and car. Once underway, they discover that the Corvette is full of drugs, and the wallet is full of money. They pick up Lynn (Judy Davis) a lovely and idealistic female hitchhiker, who brings out Tex's protective instincts. The duo's gift at seeking out trouble continues to provide them with adventures throughout the film. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Joseph Bottoms, Greg Taylor, (more)
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