Early Life
Arquette was born in New York City, the daughter of Brenda Olivia "Mardi" (née Nowak), an actress, poet, theater operator, activist, acting teacher, and therapist, and Lewis Arquette, an actor and director. Her paternal grandfather was comedian Cliff Arquette. Her mother was Jewish, the daughter of a Holocaust refugee from Poland. Her father was a convert to Islam from Catholicism, and was related to explorer Meriwether Lewis. Her siblings Patricia, Alexis, Richmond, and David Arquette are also actors.
In 1963, Arquette and her family moved to Chicago, where her father managed The Second City theater for several years. When she was eleven years old, her parents moved to a commune in Front Royal, Virginia. Arquette did not do well at school. In 1974, she hitchhiked across the country with three older teenagers, eventually going to San Francisco, where she worked at renaissance and Dickens fairs. Her professional theater debut was May 27, 1977, appearing in the Story Theatre Musical production of Ovid's The Metamorphoses at the Callboard Theatre on Melrose Place in Los Angeles.
Arquette was 19 when she married director/composer Tony Greco; they divorced 2 years later in October 1980.
Read more about this topic: Rosanna Arquette
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)