Rebecca De Mornay (born Rebecca J. Pearch on August 29, 1959) is an American film and television actress. Her breakout film role came in 1983, when she played the sultry call girl Lana, Tom Cruise's love interest in Risky Business.
De Mornay was born in Santa Rosa, California. Her birth father was the conservative radio and television commentator Wally George (born George Walter Pearch), but their relationship was famously stormy and they were estranged for the fifteen years before his death.[citation needed] De Mornay was raised by her mother, Julie Eagar, and stepfather, Richard De Mornay. She grew up in France and went to college in the United Kingdom. She studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York (which also at one time included veterans Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken).
De Mornay's film debut came with a small part in Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart (1982). Despite the subsequent success of Risky Business, De Mornay's most commercially successful film to date was The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992). In 2004, she guest starred as attorney Hannah Rose for the final few episodes of The Practice and the following year had a brief role alongside Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers.
She has the odd distinction of having had a character in a television series named for her: in Seinfeld episodes "The Muffin Tops" and "The Bookstore", actress Sonya Eddy played a thrift store clerk named Rebecca De Mornay.
In June of 2007, she appeared in the new HBO series John From Cincinnati in a starring role as matriarch of a troubled Imperial Beach, California surfing family, and as grandmother/guardian to a teen surfer on the brink of greatness.
De Mornay lived with Tom Cruise for two-and-a-half years after they met in Risky Business. In the early 1990s De Mornay was linked romantically to Leonard Cohen. She is credited as a producer and arranger on his critically acclaimed album The Future (1992).
De Mornay is currently married to sportscaster Patrick O'Neal, whose father is Ryan O'Neal. They have two children and five dogs.
