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| Photo Credit: AP. |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Louise Fletcher, a late-blooming star whose riveting performance as the cruel and calculating Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” set a new standard for screen villains and won her an Academy Award, has died at age 88.
Fletcher
died in her sleep surrounded by family at her home in Montdurausse, France, her
agent David Shaul told The Associated Press on Friday. No cause was given.
After
putting her career on hold for years to raise her children, Fletcher was in her
early 40s and little known when chosen for the role opposite Jack Nicholson in
the 1975 film by director Milos Forman, who had admired her work the year
before in director Robert Altman’s “Thieves Like Us.” At the time, she didn’t
know that many other prominent stars, including Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn
and Angela Lansbury, had turned it down.
“I was the
last person cast,” she recalled in a 2004 interview. “It wasn’t until we were
halfway through shooting that I realized the part had been offered to other
actresses who didn’t want to appear so horrible on the screen.”
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” went on to
become the first film since 1934′s “It Happened One Night” to win best picture,
best director, best actor, best actress and best screenplay.
Clutching
her Oscar at the 1976 ceremony, Fletcher told the audience, “It looks as though
you all hated me.”
She then
addressed her deaf parents in Birmingham, Alabama, talking and using sign
language: “I want to thank you for teaching me to have a dream. You are seeing
my dream come true.”
A moment of
silence was followed by thunderous applause.
Later that
night, Forman made the wry comment to Fletcher and her co-star, Jack Nicholson:
“Now we all will make tremendous flops.”
In the short
run, at least, he was right.
Forman next
directed “Hair,” the movie version of the hit Broadway musical that failed to
capture the appeal of the stage version. Nicholson directed and starred in
“Goin’ South,” generally regarded as one of his worst films. Fletcher signed on
for “Exorcist II: The Heretic,” a misconceived sequel to the landmark original.
Far more
than her male peers, Fletcher was hampered by her age in finding major roles in
Hollywood. Still, she worked continuously for most of the rest of her life. Her
post-“Cuckoo’s Nest” films included “Mama Dracula,” “Dead Kids” and “The Boy
Who Could Fly.”
She was
nominated for Emmys for her guest roles on the TV series “Joan of Arcadia” and
“Picket Fences,” and had a recurring role as Bajoran religious leader Kai Winn
Adami in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” She played the mother of musical duo
Carpenters in 1989′s “The Karen Carpenter Story.”
Fletcher’s
career was also hampered by her height. At 5-feet-10, she would often be
dismissed from an audition immediately because she was taller than her leading
man.
Fletcher had
moved to Los Angeles to launch her acting career soon after graduating from
North Carolina State University.
Working as a
doctor’s receptionist by day and studying at night with noted actor and teacher
Jeff Corey, she began getting one-day jobs on such TV series as “Wagon Train,”
“77 Sunset Strip” and “The Untouchables.”
Fletcher
married producer Jerry Bick in the early 1960s and gave birth to two sons in
quick succession. She decided to put her career on hold to be a stay-at-home
mother and didn’t work for 11 years.
“I made the
choice to stop working, but I didn’t see it as a choice,” she said in the 2004
interview. “I felt compelled to stay at home.”
She divorced
Bick in 1977 and he died in 2004.
In “Cuckoo’s
Nest,” based on the novel Ken Kesey wrote while taking part in an experimental
LSD program, Nicholson’s character, R.P. McMurphy, is a swaggering, small-time
criminal who feigns insanity to get transferred from prison to a mental
institution where he won’t have to work so hard.
Once
institutionalized, McMurphy discovers his mental ward is run by Fletcher’s
cold, imposing Nurse Mildred Ratched, who keeps her patients tightly under her
thumb. As the two clash, McMurphy all but takes over the ward with his bravado,
leading to stiff punishment from Ratched and the institution, where she
restores order.
The
character was so memorable she would become the basis for a Netflix series,
“Ratched,” 45 years later.
Estelle
Louise Fletcher was born the second of four children on July 22, 1934, in
Birmingham. Her mother was born deaf and her father was a traveling Episcopal
minister who lost his hearing when struck by lightning at age 4.
“It was like
having parents who are immigrants who don’t speak your language,” she said in
1982.
The Fletcher
children were helped by their aunt, with whom they lived in Bryant, Texas, for
a year. She taught them reading, writing and speaking, as well as how to sing
and dance.
It was those
latter studies that convinced Fletcher she wanted to act. She was further
inspired, she once said, when she saw the movie “Lady in the Dark” with Ginger
Rogers.
That and
other films, Fletcher said, taught her “your dream could become real life if
you wanted it bad enough.”
“I knew from the movies,” she would say, “that
I wouldn’t have to stay in Birmingham and be like everyone else.”
Fletcher’s
death was first reported by Deadline.
She is
survived by her two sons, John and Andrew Bick.
The late AP
Entertainment Writer Bob Thomas contributed biographical material to this
report.
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Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter:
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