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Emmanuelle Grey "Emmy" Rossum
(born September 12, 1986) is a Golden Globe-nominated
American actress and singer. She is probably most well
known for her leading roles in the films The Day After
Tomorrow and the 2004 version of The Phantom of the
Opera.
Rossum was born in New York City, as the only child to a
Jewish-American family her mother a corporate
photographer and her father a banker. When she was
three, Rossum's parents divorced and she has not
remained close to her father.
At the age of seven, the choir director at Emmy’s
school discovered that she had perfect intonation, which
led to an audition at the prestigious Metropolitan Opera
at Lincoln Center.[citation needed] Upon singing Happy
Birthday in 12 different keys, Emmy was welcomed by the
director, Elena Doria as a member of the Metropolitan
Opera Children’s Chorus.
Over the course of five years, Emmy sang onstage, and,
along with the many other members of the chorus, with
the likes of such opera greats as Placido Domingo and
Luciano Pavarotti. For $5 a night, Emmy sang in five
different languages, in 20 different operas such as La
Boheme, Turandot, a Carnegie Hall presentation of The
Damnation of Faust and A Midsummer Night's Dream. among
others, and worked under the direction of Franco
Zeffirelli in Carmen.
By age twelve, Emmy had grown too tall for the
children’s costumes, and an increasing interest in
pursuing acting led to her getting an agent, and
subsequent auditions for many acting roles.
Acting career: The year 1997 saw Rossum's
television debut with a guest appearance on Law &
Order as Alison Martin. A recurring role as the original
Abigail Williams, in the long-running daytime soap As
the World Turns was soon to follow (1999), as were
several other minor roles in two movies and mini-series.
Rossum was nominated for a Young Artist Award nomination
in 1999 for Best Performance in a TV Movie for her work
in the made-for-tv movie Genius, followed by roles such
as the young Audrey Hepburn in the ABC TV movie The
Audrey Hepburn Story (2000).
Rossum made her big screen debut in 2000’s
Songcatcher, with her friend Rhoda Griffis, in which she
plays an Appalachian orphan Deladis Slocumb. Debuting at
the Sundance Film Festival, it won the Special Jury
Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance. For her
role, Rossum received an Independent Spirit Award
nomination for Best Debut Performance and also had the
opportunity to sing a duet with Dolly Parton on the
Songcatcher soundtrack.
In Nola (2003), Rossum played the title character, an
aspiring songwriter; in her first major studio film,
Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, Rossum stars as Katie
Markum, the ill-fated daughter of small-business owner
Jimmy Markum, played by Sean Penn. As Katie, Rossum is
said to have “projected an aura of innocence that made
her character's tragic death memorable and
heartbreaking.
Following Mystic River, Rossum played heroine Laura
Chapman in the Roland Emmerich eco-disaster film The Day
After Tomorrow (2004) opposite Dennis Quaid and Jake
Gyllenhaal. After returning to New York, Rossum was the
last to audition, in full costume and make-up for the
coveted role of Christine Daaé in the screen adaptation
of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s world-famous and
longest running musical The Phantom of the Opera (2004).
After an international search for talent, and having
nearly missed the audition on account of a family
engagement, a sixteen year-old Rossum was asked to
audition in person for Lloyd Webber at his home in New
York.
Webber felt she proved her ability to play the young
opera singer who becomes the object of the phantom's
obsessive love opposite Broadway singer Patrick Wilson
as Raoul and actor Gerard Butler as The Phantom. For her
role as Christine, Rossum received a Golden Globe
nomination and many other awards.
Rossum's most recent film role was in Wolfgang
Petersen’s high-budget remake of the disaster film
Poseidon, in which she stars opposite Kurt Russell as
the daughter of former firefighter and New York Mayor,
Jennifer Ramsey. The film received mixed reviews and
flopped domestically at the box office. Rossum has
expressed a desire to choose a "smaller" and
"more intimate" films for future projects, in
reality, however, she has taken some time off and will
not be appearing in any of the future films and
television series as of 2007.
Negotations for Broadway and film, however, are being
offered as of fall 2007. If Rossum and her
representatives accept the offers, she would begin new
projects after the successful music tour. Rossum also
appeared as Juliet in a 2006 Williamstown Theatre
Festival Production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Among other projects, Rossum recorded an audio book
called Our Only May Amelia by author Jennifer L. Holm.
It was released in May 2000, produced by the Random
House Audio Publishing Group.
Recording career: After her role in The Phantom
of the Opera, Rossum was offered several deals to record
classical albums, but refused, opting to create an album
of contemporary, more mainstream music. Of her music,
she says “it’s pop music, but not Britney Spears
bubblegum pop. I want it to have a David Gray or Annie
Lennox feel. I’ve been spending up to 12 hours a day
in the studio.”
She cites Dolly Parton, Madonna, Cher, and Barbra
Streisand as some of her influences, among others.
Rossum offers that "I was inspired to cut this
album because I'm so frustrated listening to the radio
these days. There is so little emotional honesty.” Her
own songs are reflective of her inner thoughts, often
about relationships and “getting hurt, wanting the
other person back, not wanting to be the first person to
go back.”
Three songs of her first album are currently available
on iTunes as an EP and includes a 15 minute documentary
video. The album, produced by Stuart Brawley, is titled
Inside Out and is scheduled to be released into stores
in October 2007. Clips of her album are available on her
Myspace page. For the promotion of the album, Hollywood
Records also feature her album's single, Slow Me Down,
as part of the second volume of Girl Next compilation
album, due on July 10, 2007.
Personal life: Although she was born in New York,
Emmy currently splits her time between the apartment she
shares with her mother in Manhattan and Los Angeles, CA,
where she is working on her album for Geffen Records.
Rossum suffers from coeliac disease, an auto-immune
disorder marked by the body’s intolerance of food
containing gluten.
Rossum claims that "When I was really young, I
wanted to be 1,000 different things. In acting, I get to
do that every six weeks.” Although her secret ambition
is writing, directing and producing, she believes that
if she weren’t an actress, she would likely be a
mathematician or an astronaut.
Rossum attended Spence School in
Manhattan, an elite girls school attended by Gwyneth
Paltrow; the school gave her an ultimatum when her
attendance started to slip on account of her engagements
with the Met, forcing her to choose between school and
music.
Choosing to continue with her music, Rossum received her
high school diploma when she was fifteen via online
extension courses offered by Stanford University's
Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY). Although
Rossum has elected not to attend college, she has taken
some extension courses through Columbia University,
where she plans to someday major in English and minor in
Philosophy and Art History.
Rossum began dating art scion David Wildenstein of the
French billionaire art-dealing family in 2004.
Unfortunately, although Rossum considered him to be “a
great guy: really smart, a gentleman,” she was in L.A.
all the time, while he continued to reside in New York,
causing the relationship to end in 2006.
Rossum, who has been credited with her clean lifestyle
and strategic ability to avoid tabloids and paparazzi,
suggests that she would never date other celebrities for
the sake of maintaining her positive image. Preferring
to keep her personal life out of the media spotlight—a
task made easier by living in her native New
York—Rossum believes she is of no interest to the
media as she is not “sleeping around or falling down
drunk” and she is determined “not to get caught
dancing on tables.
Recently, Rossum was inspired by her Poseidon co-star
Josh Lucas's work with YouthAIDS, and became a YouthAIDS
ambassador. |
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