Ariana Richards

Ariana Richards Introduction

Ariana Richards is an actress that is probably best known for her roles in Jurassic Park. In recent years, she's focused on being a professional painter.

Ariana Richards Career

Richards made her movie debut in 1987's Into the Homeland, a made-for-cable release that starred Powers Boothe. Her most notable appearance was as Lex Murphy in the first Jurassic Park film; she reprised the role very briefly in the sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Similarly, she appeared as Mindy Sterngood in the first Tremors film and reprised her role in the second sequel Tremors 3: Back to Perfection, which went straight to video. She has been featured in other films such as Angus, where she played a bulimic girl; she has also appeared on television episodes of The Golden Girls, Empty Nest, and Boy Meets World.

When casting for the roles of Tim and Lex in Jurassic Park, director Steven Spielberg cast Joseph Mazzello for the part of Tim Murphy, but because Joseph was younger for the role (Joseph was nine years old at the time and in the book, Tim was eleven years old), Steven recognised problems with the idea of casting a much younger actress to play Alexis "Lex" Murphy as she would have to be about four years old and it would have presented too many problems for the movie. The ages of Tim and Lex were reversed, so that Lex was now older than Tim. Ariana Richards was invited to read for the role of Lex after Steven spotted her Young Artist Award winning performance in Switched at Birth. Steven expressed an interest in hearing how well Ariana could scream. Putting her in a room, the casting director recorded Ariana's screams for three minutes, after which it satisfied Spielberg that she was right for the part. Steven Spielberg claimed that he had never heard realistic screams like that since "Fay Wray from King Kong".

As well as movies, in 1998, Richards had appeared in the music video "Brick" by Ben Folds Five, portraying a high school student having an abortion.

Richards appeared in the September 2006 issue of UK Movie Magazine Empire discussing a possible return to acting.

Ariana Richards Paining

Richards has become a successful artist; many of her paintings are on display at the Lee Youngman Galleries in Calistoga, California, as well as at Willow Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona. Her paintings, usually of landscapes and figures, tend to be in the style of the impressionists. In October 2005, she was awarded with the first place prize in the National Professional Oil Painting Competition sponsored by American Artist Magazine. The painting that had won Ariana the prize was titled 'Lady of the Dahlias', for which her younger sister Bethany had modeled. Bethany had also appeared in films and had played the younger versions of Ariana's characters in both Angus and Switched at Birth.