Actor Louise Fletcher, who died at age 88, won Best Actress in 1976 for her chilling, restrained performance in the film version of Ken Kesey’s counterculture novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. was awarded the
As Nurse Ratched, who instills fear in mental hospital patients without raising her voice, she was chillingly terrifying. There was a tinge of punt villainy in that part, but Fletcher, especially in his standoff with Jack Nicholson as rebellious anti-hero McMurphy, does get a glimpse of the human control freak under this admirable exterior. I made it.
She was 40 at the time and had only recently returned to acting after a long hiatus. auditioned for the role repeatedly, without realizing it. Director Milos Forman thought the role was “evil personified”, but he revised his opinion after casting Fletcher. As a matter of fact, she believes she is helping people. ”
Sure enough, the most surprising quality of Fletcher’s performance is the understated but overt aggression she takes when orders are challenged. “It’s a symbol that her life stopped a long time ago,” Fletcher said. Nor was there any notion of the fact that there was possibility.She provided care for her insane patient in a murderous way, but she was sure she was right.”
Fletcher saw Nurse Ratched as a symbol of where America got lost during the Richard Nixon era. “She was convinced that her world was in order and that it needed to be in that order in order to function properly. Things fell apart for her the moment McMurphy arrived.” And she couldn’t have it, she had enough power for her beliefs to have consequences – and that’s how we feel in the world at the time. The film was all about who has power, how they use it, and how absolute power can utterly corrupt.”
The Academy Award-winning Fletcher closed his speech by thanking his parents using sign language. Both his parents were deaf. His mother fell ill when he was six months old, and his father was struck by lightning at the age of four.
Fletcher was born in Birmingham, Alabama, to Reverend Robert Capers, who organized more than 40 congregations for the deaf, and Esther (née Caldwell), who raised a family and assisted the deaf. . “I grew up parenting my parents,” said Fletcher. Her first memory was of “she sneaking into her parents’ bed in the middle of the night and spelling on her father’s hand that I was sick.”
Each of the couple’s children spent a year with an aunt in Texas so that they could learn to speak. Still, Fletcher did not fully master his voice until he was eight years old, and was even sent home after being convinced that he was deaf by a teacher at his school.
She studied drama at the University of North Carolina, then moved to Los Angeles and began scoring roles in television series such as Maverick, Roman, and The Untouchables in the late 1950s. In 1960, she married producer Jerry Bick, who left her acting career to raise her two sons.
The family moved to London in 1967. In the early ’70s, Fletcher attempted to return to acting, but she was told by her Hollywood agent that she had no chance of finding work. Robert Altman persuaded Fletcher to star in his mild Prohibition-era crime drama Thieves Like Us (1974), produced by Bick. She was reluctant at first, fearing she would look like a nepotist.
Her relationship with her parents inspired the choir singer to raise two deaf children in Altman’s next film Nashville (1975). Fletcher was the director’s natural choice for the role. Altman, however, resisted Vick’s insistence that his wife could only participate if he could also participate as a producer, giving the role to Lily Tomlin instead.
Around the same time, Thieves Like Us drew Fletcher to Forman’s attention. “It was luck and fate that I met Milos, but it meant nothing if I wasn’t prepared,” she said. In the aftermath of her Oscar win, she turned down the role of the evangelical mother in Carrie (1976), but she was cast in the ill-fated horror sequel Exorcist II: Heretic (1977) and the comedy Cheap Detective (1978). accepted some.
She also starred in the thriller Brainstorm and sci-fi homage Strange Invaders (both 1983), Stephen King’s adaptation of Firestarter (1984), the romantic comedy Nobody’s Fool (1986), Virginia Andrews’ In an adaptation of the best-selling novel Flower in the Attic (1987), she played another tyrannical patriarch figure.
Fletcher never played a role as memorable as Nurse Ratched, but she continued to act throughout her life. Among her notable recent works are Frank Gallagher, who faces manslaughter in the U.S. version of her hit Channel 4 comedy her drama Shameless (2011-12); had the role of the mother of
Fletcher and Vick divorced in 1977. She leaves her two sons, John and Andrew.
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