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Debra Eisenstadt
This intense young stage actor "walked in off the street" (as playwright David Mamet tells it) to audition for the understudy's position for his blistering, complex, two-character drama of sexual harassment, "Oleanna." Eisenstadt not only got the role, but impressed Mamet and company enough to be signed for the national company of the play. When Mamet began adapting his play for film, he planned to use his wife, actor Rebecca Pidgeon, to recreate her original stage role, but her pregnancy required a replacement. So Eisenstadt left the touring company of another play, "The Sisters Rosensweig," to make an impressive feature debut as a troubled college student who becomes immersed in a personal power struggle with one of her professors.