Early life
Dushku was born in Watertown, Massachusetts to Philip R. Dushku, an Albanian-American administrator-teacher in the Boston Public Schools and Judith (Judy) Rasmussen (a half-Danish-American university administrator and professor at Suffolk University); she was raised a Mormon, the faith of her mother (though she is not actively practicing). She has three older brothers, Aaron, Benjamin (Ben), and Nathan (Nate), the last of whom is also an actor and a model. Her parents divorced when she was still an infant.
Dushku was the only family with that surname in the United States of America in 1920 and were living in Massachusetts. Judith Rasmussen's grandfathers were both Danish, while both her grandmothers were of Colonial English ancestry and descended, among some noble Anglo-Saxon and Norman families, once from an illegitimate child of King Henry I of England, once from an illegitimate child of Count Geoffrey V of Anjou, once from an illegitimate child of King Henry II of England, and twice from King Edward I of England's first marriage. They belonged to the Mormon community of Utah, Idaho and Arizona, where their most noted ancestors and relatives have settled in the mid-1800's, at the very beginning of both the colonization of the State and the settlement of the religious community, coming from the traditional States of origin of the Mormon pioneers in New England, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Vermont [6] [7] [8].
A young Dushku appears in the 1994 Arnold Schwarzenegger film, True Lies
As a teenager Dushku attended Beaver Country Day School and Watertown High School.
Early career
Dushku came to the attention of casting agents when she was 10. Along with her brother, she went to a television commercial audition where she tripped on the stairs, bloodied her nose, and became an instant drama queen. She was chosen at the end of a five month search throughout the United States for the lead role of Alice, opposite Juliette Lewis in the film That Night. In 1993, Dushku landed a role as Pearl alongside Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in This Boy's Life, a role that she said opened a lot of doors. Dushku says that DiCaprio taught her how to deal with bullies and other high school dangers, for which she is grateful.[citation needed]
The following year, she played the teenage daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies. She would also have parts as Paul Reiser's daughter in Bye Bye, Love, as Cindy Johnson with Halle Berry and Jim Belushi in Race the Sun, as well as roles in a television movie and a short film.
Dushku took some time off from acting to finish her junior and senior years of high school. She was accepted to the George Washington University in Washington, DC and Suffolk University in Boston, where her mother serves as professor of government and previously served as dean of the campus in Dakar, Senegal.
Later roles
After completing high school, Dushku returned to acting with the role of Faith, a Slayer much more troubled than the main character Buffy. Though initially planned as a five episode role, the character became so popular that she stayed on for the entirety of the third season and returned for a two-part appearance in season four, after which the remainder of her original story arc was played out as part of the first season of the Buffy spinoff series Angel. Repentant and rededicated, Faith returned as a heroine in a number of further episodes of Angel and in the last five episodes of Buffy.
Because of her convincing portrayal of a sociopath, she became an icon to many 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.[9]
In 2000, Dushku starred in Soul Survivors, reuniting her with Race The Sun co-star Casey Affleck. She followed that up with the cheerleader comedy Bring It On with Kirsten Dunst, which was a surprising success at the box office that spawned straight-to-DVD sequels. 2001 saw a busy time for her: shooting The New Guy in Texas and having to shuttle up to New York where she was reunited with actor Robert De Niro and director Michael Caton-Jones in City by the Sea. She played James Franco's junkie girlfriend and mother of his child. The film garnered attention from a wider adult audience and several good reviews.
The same year Kevin Smith invited Dushku to be a part of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, where Dushku co-starred with Shannon Elizabeth, Ali Larter, Ben Affleck, and others.
2003 saw the release of Wrong Turn, a horror film in which Dushku had the starring role, and The Kiss, an independent comedy-drama. Starting that same year, she also starred in a new Fox TV series, Tru Calling, where she played the main character, Tru Davies, a medical student whose grant is pulled out from under her, forcing her to take a job at a local morgue where she discovers that she has the power to "re-live" the previous day over again, an ability she used to right wrongful deaths.
She has had many roles as a "bad girl" in movies and relishes the opportunities. In an interview with Maxim Magazine in May of 2001, Eliza says of her roles, "It’s easy to play a bad girl: You just do everything you’ve been told not to do, and you don’t have to deal with the consequences, because it’s only acting."
Dushku starred in an off-Broadway production entitled Dog Sees God from December 2005, playing "Van's sister", a character paralleled with Lucy from original Peanuts comic strip that the play production is based on. 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.
Dushku 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 also auditioned for the female lead in the sports drama The Final Season. Dushku almost had the role, to the point where the studio had purchased a wardrobe for her, but she later dropped out to make a trip to Albania. Rachael Leigh Cook got the part instead.
Future projects
On October 1, 2005, she announced at Wizard World Boston that shooting had begun for Nobel Son (to be released in 2007), in which she will star with Alan Rickman, Danny DeVito, Bill Pullman, and Peter Boyle.
Other forthcoming projects include On Broadway, an independent movie filmed in her native Boston due for release in 2007.
Variety announced on August 2, 2006 that Dushku will co-star with Macaulay Culkin in Sex and Breakfast, a dark comedy written and directed by Miles Brandman.
Dushku will star in Open Graves, a horror-thriller movie about a satanic game co-starring Mike Vogel.
She announced, on December 5, 2006, that she would be the main character on a new upcoming thriller directed by Rob Schmidt who she had previously worked with on Wrong Turn. It is called The Alphabet Killer and is her fifth scheduled release for 2007.
She will play Eve, the lead character on "Nurses" (also known as Philadelphia General), a hospital comedy/drama for Fox. This will be the second FOX pilot in which she has been cast. The first was 2003's "Tru Calling".[10]
Personal life
She is currently dating Los Angeles Dodgers' starting pitcher, Brad Penny.[11] Dushku lives in the Los Angeles area.
Eliza Dushku Foundation
Dushku has started The Eliza Dushku Foundation, a new project with her father to help Camp Hale, a summer camp for inner city Boston boys open since 1974, where the Dushku family are closely involved. Through the sale of props and fan memorabilia, the Dushkus hope to generate increased contributions in order to pay for the maintenance of Camp Hale for generations to come.
