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Biography - Born 04/08/1966
A tall, striking blonde beauty, Robin Wright began modeling while still a student in high school. In 1984, she won a small role on the NBC primetime series "The Yellow Rose" before landing the leading ingenue part on the new NBC daytime soap "Santa Barbara". For nearly three years, Wright played Kelly Capwell, a role that earned her two Daytime Emmy nominations. After her feature debut in Penelope Spheeris' "Hollywood Vice Squad" (1986), she won attention as the reluctant title character of Rob Reiner's comic fable, "The Princess Bride" (1987). Phil Joanou's "State of Grace" (1990), meanwhile, featured the Dallas-born actress, complete with flawless "New Yawk" accent, as the sister of two second-rate Irish mobsters. It also marked her first screen pairing with Sean Penn whom she married in 1996 after a five-year relationship.
Wright kept busy in the 90s with appearances in unconventional projects that had varied box-office success. "The Playboys" (1992) placed her as a headstrong unwed mother in Northern Ireland, caught in a love triangle with Aidan Quinn and Albert Finney. She followed up with a supporting role in Barry Levinson's elaborate flop "Toys" (1992). Wright earned her best notices to date for her turn as Jenny, the lifelong love of Tom Hanks' "Forrest Gump" (1994), for which she adopted a Southern accent and was aged several decades quite gracefully. Sean Penn's "The Crossing Guard" (1994) gave her a key supporting role as a free-spirited woman who offers healing to a convicted murderer. She next essayed the title role in "Moll Flanders" (1996), a picaresque tale, based on the Daniel Defoe novel, about the fortunes of an 18th Century Englishwoman searching for love and happiness. The following year, Wright (now billed as Robin Wright Penn) co-starred with her husband and John Travolta in "She's So Lovely", a drama written by the late John Cassavetes about a woman whose ex-husband re-enters and complicates her life after a ten-year absence. In a role that undoubtedly was written for Gena Rowlands, Wright offered an intense, emotional turn that was the cornerstone of the film. She and her husband were again teamed for "Hurlyburly" (1998), the screen version of David Rabe's Broadway play about Hollywood wannabes then co-starred with Kevin Costner in the critically-derided romance "Message in a Bottle" (1999).
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