It’s been ten years since Jennifer Jason Leigh has had a lead female role in a big Hollywood film. In 2004, she starred opposite Christian Bale in The Machinist. This week she’s been cast as the female lead, Daisy, in Quentin Tarantino’s post-Civil War western The Hateful Eight. The cast also includes Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern. Daisy is “the mysterious prisoner handcuffed to the rugged bounty hunter played by Russell.”
Jennifer Jason Leigh’s first lead role in a feature film was alongside Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982. Since then she’s portrayed a variety of female characters including a suicidial stalker in Single White Female and a prostitute in Last Exit to Brookyn. She said recently: “I could never play the ingenue, the girl next door or the very successful young doctor. That would be a bore.”
