ABOUT ELIZA - BIOGRAPHY


Eliza Patricia Dushku was born in Boston, Massachussets on December 30, 1980, but lived in Watertown. She is the youngest of four children and the only girl. She has 3 brothers whom she adores (Aaron, Ben and Nate). Her mother, Judy, is a University administrator/professor at Suffolk University. Her father, Philip, is an administrator/teacher in the Boston Public School and a member of the Camp Hale Alumni Association's Exexutive Committe. They divorced before she was born.

She says she was a tomboy growing up, playing 'tackle football' with her brothers and "all that kind of stuff".She has studied the piano, drums and dance (jazz, tap and ballet) and she started acting playing numerous amateur presentations at the Watertown Children's Theatre where she has been part of the company since she was in first grade. In addition to acting, she sometimes is seen on stage at the Children's Theatre signing for the deaf. Now, 25 years old, she already is considered a veteran of the large and small screen.

 

Eliza has numerous starring roles in several acclaimed films. Eliza Dushku was discovered when she was 10, when she went along with her brother to a commercial audition, tripped on the stairs broke her nose and became an instant Drama Queen, and came to the notice of the casting agents. She was chosen at the end of a 5-month search throughout the United States for the perfect girl to play the lead role of Alice opposite Juliette Lewis in the film That Night when she was 12. 

The following year (1993) Dushku landed a role as Pearl alongside Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in This boy's life in a role that she said opened a lot of doors for her. Leonardo taught Eliza a valuable lesson. She was constantly getting badgered by students and teachers about her film making. Dicaprio taught her how to deal with bullies and other high school dangers, and for that Eliza says she is forever grateful to him.  In the following year, she played Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis' teenage daughter in True Lies. She then had parts as Paul Reiser's daughter in Bye Bye, Love and as Cindy Johnson with Halle Berry and Jim Belushi in Race the Sun as well as playing parts in a television movie and a short film. She began to get older roles, able to look a few years beyond her true age.

 

Eliza took time off from acting to finish her junior and senior years of high school. She was accepted in George Washington and Suffolk Universities, in Boston (where she wants to study something other than acting.) Any time she has said that she was deciding between going to college or going on with her film career, and it seems like school is on hold for now.  

After high school, her return into acting was in Buffy: The Vampire Slayer with the role of Faith, a Slayer much more troubled than Buffy. Though initially planned as a five episode role, Faith (and Eliza) became so popular with the fans, cast and crew that she stayed on throughout the whole of the third season. She has made guest appearances in both Buffy and it's spin-off Angel.  

 

Because of  her convincing role as evil she became an icon for some of America's worst criminals. She was inundated with piles of fan mail from legions of prisoners. She said that "I've been getting fan mail from maximum security penitentiaries, and Death Row. What are the authorities thinking of in playing a show with young teenage girls to Death Row inmates? They write everything - disgusting things that you don't even want to know about. And they send me pictures - 'Oh, here's a picture of me before I was incarcerated!' and there's some guy sat on the sofa with a bottle of beer and a moustache, and a big gut. It's so creepy. Way more creepy than Buffy."

 

In 2000, she starred with Kirsten Dunst in the cheerleading comedy Bring It On, that was a surprising success at the box office. The highly popular among fans director, Kevin Smith, invited Eliza to be a part of his final adventure for his two characters, Jay and Silent Bob, in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, where Eliza co-starred with the likes of Shannen Elizabeth, Ali Larter, Kevin Smith, Ben Affleck and many more.  

 

After this, the rubbish teen horror movie Soul Survivors, pursued by The New Guy , which was accepted as a decent effort in the teen movie genre,  came as the actresses first wrong moves since her return.  

 

She then returned to work with Robert DeNiro and director Michael Caton-Jones in City by the Sea, teaming her up with James Franco, playing his junkie girlfriend and mother of his child. In this role she showed her versatility and gave her more attention from an adult audience as opposed to teens.

During the 2003 she released Wrong Turn, an excellent horror film, defined like the wet dream of a 70's horror fan by the critics.  

 

Simultaneously to the release of an independent movie, The Kiss, a refreshing comedy/drama, she issued a risky bet: an original and  innovative Fox's TV series, Tru Calling, where she played Tru Davies, a medical grad student whose grant is suddenly pulled out from under her, and takes a job at a local morgue. There, she discovers that she has the power to "re-live" the previous day over again to help the people who wrongly end up dead. She uses this gift not only to save lives, but to help her trouble-plagued family - a drug addicted sister and a gambling brother. Unfortunately, Fox cancelled the series in its second season, not totally aired and only with 6 episodes.

 
Eliza moved to the Los Angeles area, where she've bought a house in Lauren Canyon, with Nate, the oldest of her three brothers, Eliza's best friend and, as she puts it, "partner in crime". But she hasn't enjoyed her house very much: she lived in Vancouver when she was shooting Tru Calling (where the TC set was) and after that she lived in a rented appartment in New York city, where she had her first stage experience as an adult: an Off-Broadway play named Dog Sees God, playing "Van's sister", a character paralleled with Lucy from original Peanuts comic strip that the play production is based on. She started in the play in December 2005, but she quit in February 2006 along with several other members of the cast amongst rumours of alleged abuse from the producer, which were later dismissed.

In 2006, she voiced the role of Yumi Sawamura in the English language version of the PlayStation 2 video game Yakuza, published and developed by SEGA, and released in September 2006.

She was almost cast as the love interest to Sean Astin in The Final Season and word got around that she was already cast, confirming her involvement to the extent the crew assembled a wardrobe for her. However, it was later confirmed that she had lost the part to Rachael Leigh Cook, her coworker in Yakuza, after one last audition.

On October 1, 2005, she began shooting Nobel Son (released in the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival), in which she stars with Alan Rickman, Danny DeVito, Bill Pullman, and Peter Boyle. Also in 2007 she starred the direct-to-DVD movie  Sex and Breakfast, a dark comedy written and directed by Miles Brandman that Eliza will co-star with Macaulay Culkin and On Broadway, an independent movie filmed in her native Boston (released in the 2007 Boston Film Festival).

Other forthcoming projects include the new upcoming thriller directed by Rob Schmidt (who she had previously worked with on Wrong Turn), The Alphabet Killer, Open Graves, an Spanish horror-thriller movie about a satanic game co-starring Mike Vogel, and the new Randall Miller's movie, Bottle Shock, the story behind the birth of the Napa wine industry, with her co-workers in Nobel Son Alan Rickman and Bill Pullman, and The Thacker Case, based on the real-life 1983 wrongful death case of Kevin Thacker,  all of them scheduled to be released in 2008. 

In 2007,  Eliza has inked a development deal with Fox Broadcasting Co. and 20th Century Fox Television. Under the pact, said to be in the mid- to high-six figures, the network and the studio will develop projects tailor-made for the actress and they also will approach her with existing pitches and scripts. Under this deal, Eliza is busy now developing her upcoming new show, Buffy creatorJoss Whedon's Dollhouse, which she co-produces and stars.

Acorn Online announced on April 20, 2006 that Eliza also has been cast in Theo Avgerinos's Zoe. The movie will shoot in Montreal. The story takes place in a small New England town, where two brothers are trying to revive a Greek family restaurant. Both brothers are in love with the same girl, who works in the restaurant, but the movie isn't confirmed yet. 

Eliza has started a new project with her father to help Camp Hale (a summer camp that has been giving inner-city Boston boys a chance to experience life away from the streets since 1900 and where the Dushku family are closely implicated): the Eliza Dushku Foundation. Through the sale of props and fan memorabilia, the Dushkus hope to generate increased contributions to continue the tradition of Camp Hale for generations to come. The EDF is currently on hyatus, after more than a year without saling any prop.

       

Also, Eliza has been directly implicated in another two projects:

* Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids: Our girl have launch an auction, with the help of 100 smokers committed to quitting, not only aimed at raising money for a worthy cause, but also for telling smokers how mental preparation and new nicotine patch technology can help break down the barriers to successful smoking cessation. 

Eliza wrote her own message of encouragement on a yoga mat to add to the collection of other yoga mats from some of the biggest names in film, television, sport and music as Jennie Garth, Neve Campbell, Donna Karan, Carrie-Anne Moss, Kelly Preston, Bonnie Raitt, Lisa Rinna, Cheryl Tiegs, Raquel Welch, Lindsay Lohan or Patricia Velazques. The mats were auctioned on eBay and all proceeds (100 percent) were donated to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping prevent new generations of smokers from starting in the first place.

* The Pink Project: a photography book, in which the proceeds are going to two non-profit organizations: RAINN (The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) and LABCA (The Los Angeles Breast Cancer Alliance). Elizas photos were added to the project on March/05. The book is due to be released on late 2007.