Whatever Happened to Rebecca De Mornay? Here’s What the ‘NCIS’ Guest Star Has Been Up To
Everyone has their own idea about Rebecca De Mornay‘s most iconic role. To some, the actress will always be Lana, the secretly sweet call girl from her breakthrough film, 1983’s Risky Business; to others, she’s eternally Peyton, the vengeful nanny-from-hell villain of 1992’s The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Tonight, she’ll reprise a newer role in the season 22 finale of NCIS: Carla Marino, a powerful organized crime boss introduced in the season’s sixth episode.
What has De Mornay been doing recently? And where will you see her next? Read on to find out.
From the music business to Risky Business
© Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection
De Mornay was born Rebecca Jane Pearch in 1959; her parents divorced in 1960, and she took on the surname of her mother’s second husband, Richard De Mornay, in 1961. However, Richard died of a heart attack the following year, and the family relocated to Europe; De Mornay attended school in the UK and Germany.
After graduation, De Mornay briefly dipped into the music business, co-writing the song “King of Kung Fu” for the 1975 martial arts film Goodbye Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death (the film did not actually feature Bruce Lee, who had been dead for two years by that point; rather, it featured an actor named Bruce Li). Soon after, De Mornay returned to the States and began acting.
A small role in Francis Ford Coppola‘s 1981 film One From the Heart led to Risky Business in 1983. That film’s success brought De Mornay to the big leagues; she co-starred in the 1985 Hal Ashby/ Neil Simon film The Slugger’s Wife, the 1985 historical drama The Trip to Bountiful, and the 1991 firefighting blockbuster Backdraft, where she played the wife of Kurt Russell‘s heroic Lieutenant Bull McCaffrey.
Rockin’ the cradle
(c)Buena Vista Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection
To many, De Mornay is synonymous with the erotic thrillers of the early ’90s — a run that began with her star turn as Peyton, the evil nanny who terrorizes Annabella Sciorra in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. The film was a hit, earning over 10 times its budget at the box office, and launched an era of De Mornay’s career where she often played characters who found themselves in sexy, dangerous situations — like the lawyer in 1993’s Guilty as Sin, who is charmed by possible murderer Don Johnson, and the criminal psychologist in 1995’s Never Talk to Strangers, who begins a romance with a mysterious man played by Antonio Banderas.
But it wasn’t all steamy dramas and sexy villainesses — she also had a memorable turn in 1993’s The Three Musketeers, where she played … okay, another sexy villainess.
In the mid-’90s, De Mornay also made her first serious forays into TV; after appearing in a few made-for-TV movies, she appeared in a 1995 episode of The Outer Limits, and starred in the 1997 ABC miniseries adaptation of The Shining; she played Wendy Torrance, the role made famous by Shelley Duvall.
A new day for De Mornay
De Mornay appeared in a few high-profile films in the early 2000s, including the 2003 John Cusack thriller Identity, and nabbed a small role in the 2005 comedy Wedding Crashers; in 2007, she starred in the short-lived HBO drama John From Cincinnati. But as the decade wore on, De Mornay backed away from the spotlight.
She began to become a familiar on-screen presence again in the 2010s, however, after a role in 2012’s American Reunion that sent up her sexpot reputation. She appeared in more than a dozen episodes of Netflix’s Jessica Jones as Dorothy Walker, the cruel mother of Jessica’s best friend, Trish, and showed up multiple times on the police fantasy dramedy Lucifer.
In 2024, she starred in the Bella Thorne horror drama Saint Clare, the Kevin Spacey-starring mystery Peter Five Eight, and Off the Record, a rom-com directed, inexplicably, by Peyton Manning. But fans will be most interested in her NCIS role, which began earlier this season. Though Carla is a major figure within the Kansas City mafia, she’s a morally ambiguous character who shares a history with Gary Cole‘s Parker. Will she be back for season 23? You’ll have to watch and see if it’s a new day for De Mornay.
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