Rebecca De Mornay was born Rebecca J. Pearch on August 29, 1959. Though born in Santa Rosa, California, De Mornay and her half-brother, Peter, grew up in Europe, where their mother relocated the family after the death of Rebecca’s stepfather. Primarily raised in England and Austria, she graduated summa cum laude from a German-speaking school in the Alps and she remains fluent in both French and German. De Mornay began her acting training at the prestigious Lee Strasberg’s Institute in Los Angeles. She then apprenticed with Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Film Studio before landing her big break in 1983, as a sassy and sophisticated call girl opposite Tom Cruise in the box office hit, Risky Business. She was further catapulted to international stardom as the chillingly twisted nanny in the 1992 thriller, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. De Mornay made her directorial debut on a segment of the show The Outer Limits.

Cissy Yost, played by Rebecca De Mornay on John from Cincinnati, is the tough-as-nails glue that holds the Yost family together. She is a working mother in charge of managing the family surf shop business and raising grandson Shaun.


(Photo courtesy of HBO)