Ellen Barkin Biography

Ellen Barkin was born on April 16 1954 into a working-class Jewish family in South Bronx NY. Her father was a salesman for Fuller Brush who also worked as an usher at Yankee Stadium; her mother was an administrative assistant at Jamaica Hospital. Always a rebellious child Barkin once protested her parents' refusal to let her go to Woodstock by staying up all night dropping acid. At 15 she spent a great deal of time hanging out in Greenwich Village and on a lark auditioned for the High School of Performing Arts. Though accepted her teachers felt her chances at succeeding were slim at best citing that she had a little talent but no spark. After studying at the school for three years Barkin moved on to Hunter College where she worked as a waitress to pay her tuition while studying history and drama. She left college wanting to be an Egyptologist but instead decided to pursue acting. Though it took no small amount of time to get her first break in Irish Coffee the roles started flooding in.
After bit parts in such impressive film fare as Diner (1982) Tender Mercies (1983) and Eddie and the Cruisers (1983) Barkin landed her first major lead in The Big Easy (1987) portraying an uptight recent Northern import to the New Orleans District Attorney's office who falls in love with - against her better judgment - a homegrown local cop-cum-ladies' man (Dennis Quaid) she is forced to eventually prosecute. Despite her initial reservations Quaid's character finally turns her on and the resultant sex scene while not tremendously explicit was certainly a temperature raiser assuring audiences of even steamier roles to come. Although she missed the mark with her sexy firebrand in Johnny Handsome (1989) creating a truly despicable femme gang member Barkin was in top form as the hard-bitten voraciously carnal suspect romantically linked to weary bourbon-slugging cop Al Pacino in Sea of Love (1989). Concealing her emotional vulnerability beneath her big-city single woman's armor she matched Pacino stride for stride with the two presenting a realistic portrayal of an uncertain couple while the steamy sex scenes between them raised her bombshell quotient exponentially.

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