Tea Leoni-Filmography

Born:

February 25, 1966 in New York, NY

Occupation:

Actor, Executive Producer

Biography:

First earning fame as a witty, agile comic actress on TV, smart, leggy beauty Téa Leoni was poised for Hollywood movie stardom by the late '90s. Born Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni and raised in New York City, Leoni graduated from boarding school in Vermont and headed to Sarah Lawrence College to stud.

First earning fame as a witty, agile comic actress on TV, smart, leggy beauty Téa Leoni was poised for Hollywood movie stardom by the late '90s. Born Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni and raised in New York City, Leoni graduated from boarding school in Vermont and headed to Sarah Lawrence College to study psychology. After dropping out to travel for several months, Leoni intended to finish college at Harvard. Though she had never planned on acting, Leoni auditioned on a dare for a planned TV remake of Charlie's Angels and was cast. Though the 1988 writer's strike killed the series, Leoni opted to stay in Hollywood. After several years of modeling and TV commercials, Leoni made her film debut as the "Dream Girl" in Blake Edwards' farce Switch (1991). A small part in A League of Their Own (1992) and starring roles in the short-lived Fox sitcom Flying Blind (1992) and the TV movie The Counterfeit Contessa (1994) brought Leoni more attention. While she co-starred as the obligatory female-witness-in-peril in the blockbuster actioner Bad Boys (1995), Leoni's gift for acid wit and goofy physical comedy turned her into a TV star that same year in the sitcom The Naked Truth. Despite a network change, The Naked Truth lasted three seasons; Leoni further bolstered her comic reputation with her performance as a high-strung psychology student in David O. Russell's excellent screwball comedy Flirting With Disaster (1996). While The Naked Truth mined TV laughs out of tabloids, Leoni's own personal life became paparazzi fodder when she married X-Files heartthrob David Duchovny in 1997. After taking a turn for the serious as a reporter in the first 1998 asteroid blockbuster Deep Impact, Leoni took a break from acting to have a daughter with Duchovny in 1999. Leoni returned to movies in 2000 with a charming performance as Nicolas Cage's beloved in the syrupy dramedy The Family Man. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Tea Leoni- Personal Life

Leoni states in the October 27, 2006, issue of Life magazine that she became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF partially because her paternal grandmother was the president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF for 25 years.

Leoni married her first husband, Neil Joseph Tardio, Jr., a television commercial producer, on June 8, 1991, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Hope, New Jersey.^[8] The couple divorced in 1995. She married her second husband, actor David Duchovny, on May 6, 1997, after a nine-week courtship. Their first child, daughter Madelaine West Duchovny, was born on April 24, 1999, in Southern California,^[9] and their second, son Kyd Miller Duchovny, was born on June 15, 2002, in Los Angeles, California The family lives in Malibu, California. On Wednesday, October 15, 2008, Leoni and Duchovny confirmed that they have been separated "for several months".[

Tea Leoni- Career

Leoni attended Brearley School and The Putney School. She attended but did not complete studies at Sarah Lawrence College. In 1988 she was cast as one of the four new angels in Angels 89, an updated version of the 1970s show, Charlie's Angels. In May 1988, Life magazine ran a story on the casting of this new series. After production delays, the show never aired. The following year, Leoni starred as "Lisa DiNapoli" in the TV series Santa Barbara.

She went on to appear in the film A League of Their Own (1992), and later that year starred with Corey Parker in the single-season Fox sitcom Flying Blind, playing a beautiful, eccentric, downtown-Manhattan libertine who falls in love with an ordinary Long Island college graduate. In February 1995, she played a guest role in an episode of the sitcom Frasier, playing the fiance of Sam Malone, portrayed by guest star Ted Danson, in a crossover from Cheers. That same year, Leoni landed the lead role in the sitcom The Naked Truth, playing Nora Wilde, a tabloid news journalist. The show ran through 1998.

Her films include Bad Boys (1995), Deep Impact, The Family Man, Jurassic Park III, Hollywood Ending, and Spanglish.

Tea Leoni-Biography

Leoni was born Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni (/ˈteɪə pɑːntəleɪˈoʊniː/) in New York City, the daughter of Emily (née Patterson), a dietician and nutritionist, and Anthony Pantaleoni, a corporate lawyer of the firm Fulbright & Jaworski.^[1][2] Leoni’s mother is a native of Texas, and her father is of Italian and Polish descent.^[3][4] Leoni’s paternal grandmother, Helen "Helenka" Tradusa Adamowska (1901 - 1987), was a film and stage actress who was a sister of Józef and Tymoteusz Adamowski, who with Józef's wife of Antonina Szumowska-Adamowsk were the Adamowski Trio.^[5][6] Leoni's paternal great-grandfather was the brother of Italian economist and politician Maffeo Pantaleoni.^[5]