Annabeth Gish Biography
As a juvenile actress, Gish gave a fine performance as a young girl caught between bomb testings and family feuds in the 1986 “sleeper” hit, “Desert Bloom”. She then played Julia Roberts’ sister in “Mystic Pizza” (1988) before taking time to earn a BA from Duke University. When she returned to Hollywood, she was a young leading lady with a porcelain complexion and winning smile.
Gish made “Desert Bloom” when she was 13, and, while still a teen, she portrayed the high school girl whom Jon Cryer, on the run from mobsters, romances in “Hiding Out” (1987). Since returning to films, Gish played the first wife of the young “Wyatt Earp” (1994), Julie Nixon in Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” (1995) and was in the ensemble casts of “Beautiful Girls” and “The Last Supper” (both 1996). In the former, she was Timothy Hutton’s girlfriend, a high-powered Manhattan attorney, while in the latter she was an idealistic left-wing student who joins others in killing right-wingers.
Her TV debut was in the 1986 ABC TV-movie “Hero in the Family”. Gish had her first lead in “When He’s Not a Stranger” (CBS, 1989) as a college freshman victimized by acquaintance rape and a college administration that wishes to make the incident disappear. In “Silent Cries” (NBC, 1993), she delivered a gritty portrayal of a young woman interned by the Japanese during World War II, while in the miniseries “Scarlett” (CBS, 1994) she was Anne Hampton, the wife Rhett Butler takes after his divorce from Scarlett O’Hara in the sequel to “Gone With the Wind”. Gish made her TV series debut in the 1995 CBS effort “Courthouse” as a young lawyer assigned to the sex crimes unit despite her discomfort with the area. Six years later, she joined the cast of Fox’s long-running “The X-Files” playing Agent Reyes.