Cissy Yost
Whether Cissy is strong-willed or pig-headed remains up for debate, but in any case, her tough demeanor corrals a family that would otherwise scatter. Besides managing the family’s surf shop and handling Shaun’s upbringing, Cissy also plays the harsh realist to Mitch’s abstract surfer - a role she tired of years ago.
Rebecca De Mornay Biography
Early life
De Mornay was born in Santa Rosa, California. Her birth father was the conservative radio and television commentator Wally George (born George Walter Pearch), but their relationship was famously stormy and they were estranged for the fifteen years before his death.[citation needed] De Mornay was raised by her mother, Julie Eagar, and stepfather, Richard De Mornay. She grew up in France and went to college in the United Kingdom. She studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York (which also at one time included veterans Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken).
Career
De Mornay’s film debut came with a small part in Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart (1982). Despite the subsequent success of Risky Business, De Mornay’s most commercially successful film to date was The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992). In 2004, she guest starred as attorney Hannah Rose for the final few episodes of The Practice and the following year had a brief role alongside Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers.
She has the odd distinction of having had a character in a television series named for her: in Seinfeld episodes “The Muffin Tops” and “The Bookstore”, actress Sonya Eddy played a thrift store clerk named Rebecca De Mornay.
In June of 2007, she appeared in the new HBO series John From Cincinnati in a starring role as matriarch of a troubled Imperial Beach, California surfing family, and as grandmother/guardian to a teen surfer on the brink of greatness.
Personal life
De Mornay lived with Tom Cruise for two-and-a-half years after they met in Risky Business. In the early 1990s De Mornay was linked romantically to Leonard Cohen. She is credited as a producer and arranger on his critically acclaimed album The Future (1992).
De Mornay is currently married to sportscaster Patrick O’Neal, whose father is Ryan O’Neal. They have two children and five dogs.