Rachel Weisz has revealed that she suffered a miscarriage in the past, while speaking about her new series Dead Ringers.
The actor, 53, discussed the negative reaction to scenes of childbirth and baby loss in the show. Weisz plays twin gynaecologists in the series, which is gender-reversed remake of the 1988 horror of the same title.
Speaking to Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel of The News Agents podcast, Weisz, who is married to fellow actor Daniel Craig, said she was “surprised” by the reaction, adding: “I was just telling this story about the female experience and it didn’t seem to have been like heightened or overdramatised.
“Women had miscarriages, I’ve had a miscarriage, so you suddenly see blood coming out of your body and these are just all part of a female experience of being alive.”
Weisz, a mother-of-two who prefers to keep her personal life out of the public eye, did not offer further details about when her miscarriage occurred.
She continued: “I think we’re not used to seeing any of those things being represented cinematically or fictionally. So maybe this is breaking some new ground, this show.”
The Favourite star also gave her thoughts on US anti-abortion activists who believe in the death penalty.
“Both ends of life have different rules, it is very strange,” she said. “Children have to be born but there’s going to be no free healthcare for them. There’s no free schooling for children under the age of five.
“And now every day, there seems to be more and more of a chance that you might get shot by an assault rifle at school. You can take life at the end of life; the government can choose to say you deserve to die. But at the beginning of life, a woman has no choice. How do you rationalise that?”
Last month, the actor addressed the graphic birthing scenes in the first episode of Dead Ringers, describing them as “beautiful”.
Speaking on BBC’s Woman’s Hour, she said: “[Writer Alice Birch] and I were really interested in showing birth in the first episode. I think we felt like it was something we don’t often see.
“We’re incredibly used to seeing violence and people being killed, death, blood surrounding that. We’re almost immune to that at this point. For me, it’s a beautiful moment. It’s something we’re really interested in showing.”
Weisz shares 16-year-old son Henry with former partner Darren Aronofsky and four-year-old daughter Grace with husband Craig.
She married Craig, 55, in 2011 in an intimate ceremony in New York with just four guests in attendance. The James Bond star also has a daughter from his previous marriage to Fiona Loudon.
