R.I.P. Louise Fletcher

[dws1982]

I always like the strange chance situations that get a non-leading lady/man like Fletcher a moment in the spotlight and Lead Acting Oscar. Some take the chance and run with it: Anthony Hopkins, despite some big roles (and Emmy wins) in TV movies, was not a leading man before The Silence of the Lambs, but then he had his own projects that were more-or less built around him. Even some that tried to turn him into an action star of sorts. But I don't think that was ever going to be the case for Fletcher. She did try to take advantage of the opportunities that winning Best Actress gave her. She did the Exorcist sequel, which was probably a net negative in career terms. And Hollywood, especially in the 70's, was harder on women, especially those who didn't meet conventional notions of "beauty" and those who were in their 40's. So she never became a movie star, but she did work for a long time. In movies, it was mostly bad and forgotten ones. I wonder if the Exorcist sequel pigeonholed her as a "genre" actress (I do hate that term), because she was in a lot of horror and sci-fi. Flowers in the Attic was probably her most prominent movie role post-1980, one of the few times she got to play anything close a lead, but despite it being something of a cult favorite, the movie is terrible and she is doing the Cuckoo's Nest hardass thing dialed way way up in a role that needs to be played with a lot more dimension--or any at all--to be interesting. In TV, she was better-used; I don't know that this was a better use of her, but she was in the Karen Carpenter TV movie, which my grandparents had videotaped, and then we (all the grandkids) watched it literally every time we were at their house (which is now my house) to the point that my dad or my uncles eventually hid the tape. Her Deep Space Nine role--the best of the Star Trek series--was good, she had a really good one-off guest spot as a judge on The Practice (you kind of wondered why she never became a recurring judge), and her recurring role on the early seasons Shameless--a show that was, on the whole, crude and garish--was possibly her best performance since Cuckoo's Nest. Her Emmy-nominated guest spot on Picket Fences, a show I love three-fourths of, unfortunately was in the one-fourth of it that I don't care for, is decently acted on her part, but as written it really sells her and her character short. Never saw her nominated role on Joan of Arcadia; I was in my very uptight Christian days when it first aired, and now it's not streaming anywhere.

[Big Magilla]

I had no idea she lived in France.

[anonymous1980]

Story.

R.I.P.