Christine Lahti

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Christine Lahti (born April 4, 1950) is an American actress and Academy Award-winning film director.Lahti was born in Birmingham, Michigan, the daughter of Elizabeth Margaret (née Tabar), a painter, homemaker and nurse, and Paul Theodore Lahti, a surgeon. Lahti has Finnish ancestry. Her surname means "a gulf", "a bay" or "a cove" in Finnish; Lahti is also a city in Finland, near Helsinki. Lahti studied fine arts at Florida State University and received her bachelor's degree in drama from the University of Michigan, where she joined Delta Gamma sorority. She then toured Europe as part of a pantomime acting troupe.After university, Lahti headed to New York City, where she worked as a waitress and did commercials. Her breakthrough movie was …And Justice for All (1979) with Al Pacino. After starring in a few blockbuster hits in the 1970s and early 1980s, Lahti has chosen to be primarily in movies she wants to act in, rather than take blockbuster roles, and she is adamant about spending time with her three children. She has also chosen to focus on television, beginning with her role in the 1979 made-for-TV adaptation of The Executioner's Song. She appeared on Broadway in Wendy Wasserstein's seriocomic play, The Heidi Chronicles.Lahti received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Swing Shift in 1984, and won an Academy Award for Best Short Film, Live Action for Lieberman in Love (1995), which she starred in and directed.She won an Emmy and two Golden Globes for her role in Chicago Hope. When she won her Golden Globe in 1998, she was in the bathroom, which was highly publicized in the press. She later made it a point to be good-humored about the incident, usually poking fun at herself at other awards shows.In 2001 her first directorial film My First Mister was released. Starring Leelee Sobieski and Albert Brooks the movie debuted with good reviews. In DVD commentary she applauds the work of her cast and crew, remarking "[I] was very lucky to have such a wonderful crew..." She did feel regret that the film was rated R, for language, despairing that the movie might not be viewed by teenagers would like and relate with the characters. Also, Lahti mentioned several times that she would have liked to have more time to shoot different perspectives in order to facilitate story arch.