Rachel Weisz with her Oscar earlier this year. Picture / Reuters
Rachel Weisz with her Oscar earlier this year. Picture / Reuters
LOS ANGELES - British actress Rachel Weisz, a recent Oscar winner for her role in The Constant Gardener, has given birth to her first child, a son fathered by filmmaker fiance Darren Aronofsky, her publicist said today.
The baby was born yesterday in New York City, where the couple livetogether, spokeswoman Mara Buxbaum told Reuters, adding that mother and child were both "happy, healthy, wonderful." She declined to give further details about the birth or the baby's name.
Confirmation of the birth came shortly after Us Weekly magazine broke the news in an account attributed to an unnamed close friend of the actress, and People magazine followed with its own report from the star's publicist.
Weisz, 35, first revealed her pregnancy in January on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, where she also gushed about her relationship with the Brooklyn-born Aronofsky, 37.
"I found myself a sophisticated, educated American," she said then. "He's not an actor. He's travelled the world. He knows where Europe is, unlike a lot of Americans. He's very cultured, but he's all man."
Weisz won the Academy Award as best supporting actress in March for her portrayal of a British diplomat's wife who is murdered in Africa while investigating the shady dealings of an international pharmaceutical company.
Co-starring Ralph Fiennes, The Constant Gardener was based on a novel by John le Carre.
Weisz, a London native of Hungarian and Austrian parentage, previously appeared in such films as The Mummy, Enemy at the Gates and Runaway Jury. The dark-haired actress also is a spokeswoman for Revlon cosmetics.
Her next big-screen appearance will be opposite actor Hugh Jackman in The Fountain, written and directed by Aronofsky. His previous credits include Pi and Requiem for a Dream.
