Rosanna Lauren Arquette was born on August 10, 1959 in New York, NY to parents actor Lewis Arquette and Brenda "Mardi" Nowak, a psychiatrist. Her paternal grandfather was actor and comedian Cliff Arquette and her siblings are actors Patricia, David, Richmond and Alexis Arquette. Her mother was Jewish, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor from Poland, and her father was a Christian convert to Islam; the family celebrated holidays associated with both religions.

In 1963, Arquette's family moved to Chicago, where her father managed The Second City theater for several years. When she was 11 years old, her parents moved to a commune in Front Royal, Virginia. Arquette did not do well at school. In 1974, she hitchhiked across the country with three older teenagers, eventually going to San Francisco, where she worked at Renaissance and Dickens fairs. Her professional theater debut was May 27, 1977, appearing in the Story Theatre Musical Ovid's The Metamorphoses at the Callboard Theatre on Melrose Place in Los Angeles.

In Hollywood, Arquette had her first roles playing teens with troubles. A few years later she started to act in mature roles. Besides cinema movies, Arquette appeared from the beginning of her career in television films. In 1982, she earned an Emmy Award nomination for the TV film The Executioner's Song. Thereafter, she played in many cinema movies and TV films and has worked with many of the most acclaimed film directors of the last twenty years.

Arquette's first starring role was in John Sayles's Baby It's You, a highly regarded but little seen film. She carried Desperately Seeking Susan but was eclipsed by her pop singer co-star Madonna. After Hours also played to her comedic talents but failed to find an audience while 8 Million Ways to Die was buried by the studio and for a time she quit Hollywood to work in Europe.

In 1989, Martin Scorsese offered Arquette a part in New York Stories. Since then, she has appeared, with few exceptions, in one or in several movies each year, some of them of notable interest, like Pulp Fiction and Crash.

Arquette was married when she was 19 to director/composer Tony Greco and divorced October 1980. She dated Steve Porcaro, member of the rock band Toto. Her 1986 marriage to composer James Newton Howard ended in the same way. The reconciliation with an old love of Arquette, English pop and rock star Peter Gabriel, proved also to be impossible.

Her relationships with musicians were the inspiration for two popular hits of the 1980s: Toto IV includes the hit "Rosanna" (though the songwriter was another Toto band member); Gabriel's album So includes his hit song "In Your Eyes", which was also about her.

Arquette married restaurateur Jon Sidel in 1993. One year later their daughter, Zoe Blue Sidel, was born. They divorced as well.

More recently, Arquette found energies to spend time with her daughter and promote awareness of breast cancer, while continuing with her work, now also as a director. In 2002 her critically acclaimed documentary Searching For Debra Winger was released. In the film Arquette interviews prominent and respected actresses (mostly between the ages of 30 and 60) in an attempt to find out whether it was practical for a working actress to successfully maintain a family.

--wikipedia