|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Add a new website Browse websites
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| Texas-born Sissy Spacek cornered the market in child-women in the 1970s and 80s before maturing into earth mothers and caregivers. Over the course of her illustrious career, she has triumphed in literary adaptations and biopics and has demonstrated a flair for both comedy and drama. Skipping college, Mary Elizabeth Spacek (dubbed "Sissy" by her two older brothers) left her native Quitman, Texas and headed to NYC where she bunked with her cousin, actor Rip Torn, and his wife, actress Geraldine Page, intent on making it as a singer. While there were the occasional gigs in which she delighted crowds with her vocals and her guitar playing, Spacek mostly marked time. She had a break of sorts when, under the pseudonym Rainbo, she recorded a novelty number called "John, You've Gone Too Far This Time" (about John Lennon posing nude on an album cover). The single failed to chart high and that spelled the end of Rainbo. Spacek decided to try her hand at acting and landed extra work in "Trash" (1970), one of the films produced by Andy Warhol's factory. Eventually landing an agent, the aspiring thespian landed her first important movie part as a teenager abducted by a white slavery ring in the lurid "Prime Cut" (1972). After that inauspicious start, Spacek landed a role that raised her profile, that of a disturbed teenager who teams with a killer (Martin Sheen) in the Terrence Malick-directed "Badlands" (1973). Inspired by the real-life 1958 case of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, "Badlands" offered Malick's low-key yet poetic take on the subject. While not a box-office hit in its premiere, it later developed a cult following. The actress' freckled face, honey blonde hair and youthful looks projected well on the big screen, especially as she imbued them with her own luminosity. Spacek was a spunky love interest to John-Boy Walton (Richard Thomas) in 1973 episodes of the CBS drama "The Waltons" and she was memorable as the disaffected 60s radical in the powerful ABC TV-movie "Katherine" (1975). Thanks in part to her husband, production designer Jack Fisk, she auditioned for and eventually won the role of the heroine of the Brian De Palma-directed adaptation of Stephen King's novel "Carrie" (1977). Spacek was extraordinary as the teen with an overly zealous religious mother (Piper Laurie) who discovers she possesses telekinetic powers and eventually seeks revenge on those who have taunted her. The performance brought the actress her first Best Actress Oscar nomination. That same year, Spacek had demonstrated her versatility as an odd young woman who befriends a co-worker at a convalescent home in "3 Women,” directed by Robert Altman and as a topless house cleaner in "Welcome to L.A." She began her move to more adult material when she undertook the title role, a talentless wannabe, in the PBS production "Verna: USO Girl" (1977). Two years later, Spacek was fine as Carolyn Cassady opposite Nick Nolte in the uneven biopic "Heart Beat". But it was her incredibly detailed, deeply moving performance as country singer Loretta Lynn in the biographical drama "Coal Miner's Daughter" (1980) that catapulted her to the front ranks of American actresses. Not only did she play Lynn from age 13 to her forties, but Spacek also did her own vocals of the singer's popular hits. The actress deservedly garnered practically every accolade for her performance including the Best Actress Academy Award. Instead of trading in on her newfound fame, though, Spacek agreed to star in her husband's directorial debut, "Raggedy Man" (1981), a period drama in which she played a divorced mother with two small children whose relationship with a sailor (Eric Roberts) leads to trouble. She followed as another real-life figure, the wife of an American who disappeared in South America in the gripping "Missing" (1982), for which she earned yet another Oscar nomination as Best Actress. Two years later, she was back in contention for that prize as a farm wife struggling to survive during economic hardships in the earnest drama "The River" (1984). Spacek went on to essay a Tennessee housewife who blows the whistle on corruption in the parole system in "MARIE: A True Story" (1985) and then landed roles in the 1986 film versions of two Pulitzer-winning plays. In "'night Mother", the actress was cast as a woman who announces her plans to commit suicide to her mom (Anne Bancroft), while in "Crimes of the Heart" (for which she earned a fifth Best Actress Academy Award nomination), she was the eccentric, would-be murderer Babe, a character that put a darkly comic spin on the many child-like women she had played in her career. That same year, she was again directed by Fisk in the modest romance "Violets Are Blue", about former high school lovers who attempt to rekindle an old relationship despite the fact that one is married. Spacek then took time off from acting to concentrate on child rearing and horse breeding on a farm in Virginia. When she did resume her acting career, it was in the well-intentioned, if little-seen civil rights drama "The Long Walk Home" (1990). She offered wifely support to Kevin Costner in "JFK" (1991), Oliver Stone's take on the conspiracy theories behind the presidential assassination. On the small screen, Spacek excelled as a children's TV show host seeking an abortion in the HBO drama "A Private Matter" (1992) and as a nurse who becomes the caregiver for an HIV-infected child in "A Place for Annie" (ABC, 1994). She netted her first Emmy nomination in "The Good Old Boys" (TNT, 1996), co-written, directed and starring "Coal Miner's Daughter" co-star Tommy Lee Jones. Back on the big screen, Spacek reunited with "Carrie" mom Piper Laurie to play a pair of sisters in the 1996 film adaptation of the Truman Capote novel "The Grass Harp.” As the 20th Century wound down, Spacek moved into more character roles. In "Affliction" (1998), she played the patient, long-suffering girlfriend of a troubled small-town traffic cop (Nick Nolte), while the dark comedy "Blast From the Past" (1999) cast her as the matriarch of a family that survived in a bomb shelter since the 1950s. David Lynch cast her as the "simple" daughter of a man who decides to ride a lawnmower several hundred miles in order to reconcile with his dying brother in "The Straight Story" (also 1999). She was once again a single mother struggling to raise a family who takes in a mysterious boarder in the CBS drama "Songs in Ordinary Time" (2000). 2001 saw the actress in one of the best roles of her career, as a grieving mother whose marriage is on the verge of collapse in the intimate, affecting drama "In the Bedroom". When the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, it was greeted with rapturous responses and Spacek and co-star Tom Wilkinson were awarded a Special Jury Prize for their stellar performances. Indeed, even though it was only January, there was immediate talk of end-of-the-year prizes (which were fulfilled) and Spacek garnered her sixth career Best Actress Oscar nomination. The actress, who at this stage of her career has decided only to accept roles for her own satisfaction and not for what they could do for her career, next was seen on the big screen in "Tuck Everlasting" (2002), an adaptation of the novel about a family that discovers a fountain of youth. She also gave a stirring performance as F. Scott Fitzgerald's mentally disturbed wife in the Showtime miniseries "Last Call," and as a result was nominated for an Emmy in 2002. As one of the original "scream queens" to go on to a major film career, Spacek's memorable cameo in "The Ring 2" (2005) as Evelyn, the mentally unhinged mother of the ghostly pursuer Samara, proved a treat for horror fans. She also played another matriarch, this time the long-suffering but surprisingly iron-willed mother of Charlize Theron's sexually harassed Minnesota miner in the drama "North Country" (2005). She was then part of a strong ensemble cast in Rodrigo Garcia’s “Nine Lives” (2005), an episodic drama centered around nine different women thematically connected through their various travails. Spacek played the suffering wife of a disabled man (Ian McShane) whose daughter (Amanda Seyfried) refuses to attend an elite eastern college in order to mediate their failing marriage. She then played the matriarch of an early-19th century family terrorized by an evil spirit intent on killing one of them in “An American Haunting” (2006). |
|
|