Rachel Weisz says cuddling her son helps her deal with stress. The British actress — who raises Henry, 3, with fiance Darren Aranofsky — had some traumatic storylines to cover in her new movie The Lovely Bones and she says her family were the best antidote to a bad day filming. “When I was making The Lovely Bones I had the perfect way to de-stress after an emotionally difficult day. Henry my son was a little one-year-old bubby when we were shooting it, so having a little one to go home and cuddle every night and play with was the perfect way to de-stress. “You just forget any of the bad fictional things you have been thinking about all day Henry is so beautiful he takes your mind off anything.”

“I’m totally into stories that are about characters and what it is to be human, that’s what interests me,” said Rachel Weisz, who plays a mother whose daughter is abducted and murdered in The Lovely Bones. In Bones, she continued in a one-on-one interview at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, “My character is just a human who doesn’t cope too well under duress.” And for this Oscar winner, however intense a role may be, it’s just work. “As an actor you have to imagine all sorts of things,” the English actress said. As Abigail, “I imagined that I was a young woman in the 1970s. I imagined that I was American. Neither of those are bad things. You imagine beautiful things. You imagine ugly things. That’s my job.” Weisz, the mother of a 3-year-old with her partner Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler), doesn’t worry about taking a role home or becoming depressed because of it. “I just don’t think in that way, that something is too dark or problematic to go to. I immerse myself in something, but I’ve learned to come out of it.” As a mother, that’s just being practical. “I can’t go home to my kid in a state of despair and tears. It’s a skill that you learn like one might learn to juggle. You learn to turn things on and off.” Even though Bones is the story of a girl’s rape and murder, told by the deceased victim Susie (Saoirse Ronan), Weisz also found “very beautiful, uplifting things about this film, and I knew that going in.” And even though she is skilled at turning emotions on and off, there was something she took away from the set. “You know what? The uplifting theme of the film (and the book), which to me is that life is a treasure and precious and a miracle, I guess that was the thing that made me feel that I want to go hug my son tighter when I get home.” Source: BostonHerald.com

Rachel Weisz and Jude Law are the toast of London’s West End after picking up the top prizes at the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards. Oscar-winner Weisz landed the coveted Best Actress trophy for her portrayal of Blanche Dubois in a production of Tennessee Williams classic A Streetcar Named Desire. Law was honoured with the award for Best Shakespearean Performance for his leading role in Hamlet, which he later reprised on Broadway. Mark Shenton, chairman of the Critics’ Circle, the body which votes for the awards, insists the pair proves Hollywood stars can flourish in the theatre as well as onscreen. He says, “Celebrity casting is viewed a little suspiciously, but Jude Law and Rachel Weisz proved they can still cut it.” The other main prizes went to Mark Rylance, who was named Best Actor for his role in Jerusalem, which also took the award for Best New Play, while Spring Awakening was crowned Best Musical at the ceremony in London on January 26.

Rachel Weisz has opened up about her upcoming film projects for 2010. The Lovely Bones star has revealed that she has a busy year ahead of her since she’s been travelling the world to film multiple roles for movies being released this year, STV reports. The 39-year-old actress said: “Well I just finished shooting The Whistleblower for a first time director Larysa Kondracki and we just finished that last week in Romania. “It’s a true story about a woman who went to work in Bosnia at the end of the nineties and blew the whistle on the UN.” Weisz will also star in the historical drama Agora, in which she admitted she didn’t use a body double for her multiple nude scenes. She added: “It is a story set in fourth century Alexandria about a woman named Hypatia. It is a true story about a woman who is a philosopher.” The Lovely Bones is currently playing in US cinemas and arrives in the UK on January 29.

Rachel Weisz was embarrassed to have Susan Sarandon play her mother in new movie Lovely Bones — because the 63-year-old looks too young and too sexy! The British actress, 39, says the Thelma and Louise star has aged pretty well. “She’s the most glamorous mum I’ve ever seen,” says Rachel. “She felt more like a big sister really because she’s way too hot and sexy. “She’s a firecracker.”
Weisz — who has a young son, Henry, with fiance Darren Aronofsky – has previously insisted she isn’t worried about getting older. “I just think that things get easier as you get older and wiser and more experienced,” she said. “You get more confident about who you are as you get older. I find that really comforting.“Twenty is excruciating, at least it was for me; in your thirties you get more confident about who you are and that is a relief so imagine what the forties will be like!”

Rachel Weisz was desperate for Darren Aranofsky not to think she was a diva. The Mummy Returns actress, who now as a three-year-old son with the Requiem for a Dream director, said she was so nervous ahead of their first meeting, she tried to impress him by behaving less like a star. She explained: “I didn’t want this cool indie director to see me in this stretch limo! But as I stepped out, he was waiting there. I was like, ‘Argh! S*t!’ I felt like such an idiot.” Since then, the pair worked together on art-house film The Fountain with Australian actor Hugh Jackman. Meanwhile, Rachel says her career makes her feel like “a spy” because she has to do so much research on every character she plays. Discussing her career, Rachel said: “I think being an actress you almost are a kind of spy, finding out about different people and then posing as them, which is a lot of fun.”