Michael Nouri is best known for his role in the 1983 sleeper hit “Flashdance” with Jennifer Beals. He was born in 1945 in Washington D.C. He had a small part in the 1969 film “Goodbye Columbus” with Ali MacGraw. He appeared in many television roles over the years as well as appearing on Broadway opposite Julie Andrews in “Victor/Victoria”. His recent films include “The Boynton Beach Club” and “The Proposal”. He has also starred opposite Glenn Clise in TV’s “Damages” and in “Brothers and Sisters”.
Handsome actor Michael Nouri may have received his start on stage in the hit play “Forty Carats” (1968-1970) and on daytime dramas like “Search for Tomorrow” (CBS/NBC, 1951-1986), but his notoriety increased dramatically after he played Jennifer Beals’ hunky boyfriend in the smash hit “Flashdance” (1983). On the basis of that considerable exposure, Nouri was poised to be a movie star, but subsequent outings like “The Imagemaker” (1986) and “The Hidden” (1987) failed at the box office and he returned to television. After a handful of short-lived series, Nouri was granted steady employment as a supporting cast member on the sitcom “Love & War” (CBS, 1992-95) and had a run on Broadway with Julie Andrews in the stage incarnation of “Victor/Victoria” (1995-97)
. A string of largely terrible direct-to-video productions somewhat tarnished Nouri’s standing, but he was rarely idle, guest starring on a number of prominent primetime shows and undertaking secondary roles in major pictures like “The Terminal” (2004) and “The Proposal” (2009). Although international stardom proved elusive, Nouri went on to have a long and successful career as a respected character performer alternating between television, film and the stage
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Joe Lando was born in 1961 in Prairie View, Illinois. His first acting role was in an episode of “Startrek”. He played Jane Seymour’s love interest in the popular TV series “Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman”. His film appearances include the recent “A.I. Assault” and “Engaged to Kill”. Joe Lando website can be accessed here.
“Matthew Broderick is second-generation show business, but that is not the usual albatross, since he does not look at all like his father James, who was – after all – a character actor, one if distinction, if not a star, like Henry Fonda, or a well-known leading man like Lloyd Bridges”. – David Shipman – “The Great Movie Stars – The Independent Years”. (1991).
Matthew Broderick was born in 1962 in New York City. His father was the actor James Broderick. Matthew first made an impact on stage in “Torch Song Trilogy”. In 1983 he made his film debut in “Max Dugan Returns”. His other ealry films include “Ladyhawke” and “War Games”. He had an enormous success with “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and in 1989 he garnered rave reviews for his part in the American Civil War epic”Glory”. His more recent films includes “The Producers”. He acts frequently on the stage on Broadway. Matthew Broderick is married to the actress Sarah Jessica Parker. He has a holiday home in Donegal, Ireland. Interview with Matthew Broderick here.
TCM overview:
Stage and screen actor Matthew Broderick was already a Tony Award-winning Broadway actor when film audiences fell in love with his 1986 performance as a highly evolved high school truant in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Apart from his onscreen successes, Broderick was one of the most respected musical and comedy stage actors of his generation, with highly acclaimed starring roles in “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and “The Producers.” On the big screen, he enjoyed occasional success with broad comedies like “The Cable Guy” (1996) and “Bee Movie” (2007) – as well as his first big hit, the nuclear thriller “Wargames” (1983) – but Hollywood often failed to find a solid place for the mild mannered, bookish-looking New Yorker and he was usually more memorable in independent, character-based films like “Election” (1999) and “You Can Count on Me” (2000).
The son of stage and screen actor James Broderick and playwright and artist Patricia Broderick, Matthew Broderick was born in New York City, NY on March 21, 1962. He grew up downtown in Greenwich Village where he attended liberal, arts-oriented private schools and hung out with his father backstage at theaters and movie sets. Broderick loved the atmosphere of the theater from an early age, but the shy kid could not imagine mustering up the nerve to perform, so he thought one day he might have a career as a set designer or a stage manager. But during his teen years at the Walden School, he still ached to be an actor; enough that that desire eventually overcame his fright. Jumping into his new passion, he took a starring role in a school production written by Kenneth Lonergan, the future Oscar-nominated screenwriter, but at that time, his then 15-year-old best friend. Broderick’s father believed in his son’s talent, and starred opposite him in Horton Foote’s “On Valentine’s Day” Off-Broadway. The teen graduated from high school and began taking acting classes with famed coach Uta Hagen, and in a very short period of time, was making a name for himself on the New York theater scene.
In 1981, Broderick won acclaim for his portrayal of David, the adopted gay son of drag queen Arnold Beckoff (Harvey Fierstein) in the Off-Broadway production of “Torch Song Trilogy.” Sadly, after only a few early preview performances in his first big show, Broderick’s father and acting inspiration died from cancer. The devastated son soldiered on and a glowing review of his performance in The New York Times brought him wider attention and a starring role on Broadway in Neil Simon’s semi-autobiographical “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” For over a year, Broderick portrayed Eugene Jerome – a Brooklyn teenager and aspiring author – in this Depression-era coming of age tale, winning a Tony Award and Theater World Award for his endearing performance.
Not surprisingly, Hollywood came calling. Broderick was flown to L.A. to film his first feature, the forgettable “Max Dugan Returns” (1982). His follow-up, however, the thriller “War Games” (1983), proved to be a huge summer smash that earned Broderick a following for his portrayal of a teen computer hacker who breaks into a military computer system and unwittingly begins a dangerous face-off between U.S. and Russian nuclear defense systems – a film timely in its premise, in that it was prior to the end of the Cold War.
Following his first big screen success, Broderick returned to Broadway where he reprised the role of Eugene Jerome in “Biloxi Blues,” which found Neil Simon’s character joining the Army during World War II. He was tapped to reprise his first stage role in the 1986 film version of “On Valentine’s Day” (broadcast on PBS as “Story of a Marriage, Part 2”) and also appeared Off-Broadway in “The Widow Claire.” In one of the most memorable roles of his film career, the 23-year-old actor went on to charm audiences as a resourceful high school student who orchestrates a highly complex day of hooky in John Hughes comedy classic “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1986). Audiences loved the baby-faced actor as the clever school rebel they all wished they could be, but despite the impact of the film, Broderick rarely returned again to that type of “cool” character.
In the midst of all his newfound fame, Broderick’s happiness was shattered after a painful incident occurred which changed his life overnight. In August 1987, the actor and his fiancée, actress Jennifer Grey – who had played his sister in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — were vacationing in Northern Ireland when Broderick caused a fatal collision that killed 63-year-old Margaret Doherty and her 30-year-old daughter, Anna Gallagher. Broderick was driving a rented BMW when he swerved into oncoming-traffic lane. Anna Gallagher, who was driving the other car, and her mother, were killed instantly. Broderick suffered a broken leg, concussion and collapsed lung. Jennifer Grey escaped with minor injuries. Initially charged with reckless driving, Broderick later plead guilty to a lesser charge of careless driving and was fined the equivalent of $175 in U.S. dollars. Not surprisingly, the victims’ family considered the light sentence a miscarriage of justice. Stunned by what he had caused, Broderick would move on in life, but never forget that part of his life.
In 1988, Broderick appeared opposite Harvey Fierstein in the film version of “Torch Song Trilogy” (1988); this time not as his character’s son, but as his lover. The same year he helped make a Mike Nichols screen adaptation of “Biloxi Blues” a hit, finally bringing Simon’s beloved stage character to film audiences. From that light comedy, he delivered a strong dramatic performance as the young commander of the first Black Union regiment in the acclaimed Civil War drama, “Glory” (1989).
With his clean-cut looks and bookish demeanor, Broderick was well-cast to play the unwitting son of a crime family in Sidney Lumet’s drama “Family Business” (1989), but despite a dream cast including Dustin Hoffman and Sean Connery, it proved to be a critical and commercial miss. Broderick fared slightly better as a naïve Vermont transplant to New York University in “The Freshman” (1990), which also starred Marlon Brando as a con man who disrupts the hapless student’s life. Sporting a beard, the baby-faced actor joined an ensemble of bright young talents for the forgettable romantic comedy “The Night We Never Met” (1993), but went on to score huge success as the voice of the adult Simba in Disney’s animated blockbuster “The Lion King” (1994). The period drama “The Road to Wellville” (1994) failed to score with audiences or critics, but Broderick was redeemed by his association with another vintage offering based on the career of writer Dorothy Parker, “Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle” (1994), which was nominated for the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
After too many years away from the medium he loved, Broderick returned to the stage in the acclaimed 1995 Broadway revival of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” In the original production, Robert Morse interpreted what would become his signature role as an outwardly simple soul who lucks into good fortune. In contrast, Broderick made his character a bit more knowing and openly ambitious, and that characterization – combined with his vocal mettle – earned the actor a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. Broderick took a leave from the show to film “The Cable Guy” (1996), where he played a hapless customer whose life becomes a nightmare after he becomes the object of obsession of Jim Carrey’s title character in Ben Stiller’s black comedy. When he returned to “How to Succeed” in early 1996, he was teamed with his future wife Sarah Jessica Parker in the female lead. Switching gears, Broderick made his film directing debut in “Infinity” (1996) a biopic of Nobel laureate Richard Feynman (whom he also played) in a script authored by Broderick’s mother. The following year Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker were married in a small ceremony in New York.
In a rare big budget actioner, Broderick was tapped to play a scientist in 1998’s “Godzilla.” That same year, he rejoined the cast of an earlier blockbuster hit in the direct-to-video sequel “The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride” (1998). He finished out a run of high profile, big budget offerings with a starring role in the family film “Inspector Gadget” (1999), where he played the tool-laden detective from the classic animated series to the tune of over $100 million dollars at the box office. But for Broderick fans, the actor was at his big screen best in the indie comedy “Election” (1999), where he played a high school teacher in a mid-life lull who is intent on stopping a perky, overachieving honor student (Reese Witherspoon) before she takes over as class president and surely g s on to enjoy a level of success that he was never able to attain. He again mined the depths of the middle-class, middle-American man trapped by his middle-of-the-road life choices in “You Can Count on Me” (2000), childhood pal Kenneth Lonergan’s brilliant and Oscar-nominated study of small town siblings on wildly different paths. On the New York stage, he appeared in the National Actors Theatre revival of “Night Must Fall” in 1999 and in Elaine May’s comic misfire “Taller than a Dwarf” in 2000.
In 2001, Broderick was back on Broadway in a Tony-nominated turn as Leo Bloom, Nathan Lane’s sidekick in the 2001 musical adaptation of Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” (1968). The production was a sensation and Broderick and Lane’s electric pairing was credited with a widespread renewed interest in Broadway musicals. Broderick took a break from the show to shoot an ABC television version of the perennial favorite “The Music Man” (2003) and a Frank Oz-helmed remake of the cult classic “The Stepford Wives” (2004). This satirical-minded take of Stepford cast the actor alongside Nicole Kidman as an upwardly mobile couple whose lives are suddenly overwhelmed by their all-too-perfect community. He returned to Broadway to complete his run of “The Producers” and reprised his voice role in the direct-to-video sequel “The Lion King 1/2” (2004). After a 10-week engagement off-Broadway in Larry Shue’s comedy “Foreigner,” Broderick re-teamed with Nathan Lane for a big screen adaptation of “The Producers” (2005). The film was a moderate hit at the box office though critics were split, as well as confused about whether to judge it based on the original film or the recent Broadway production.
Lane and Broderick were back on stage the next year, reigniting Broadway in a revival of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” where Broderick essayed the role of fussy Felix Unger. In 2006, Broderick co-starred opposite Danny DeVito as warring neighbors in the Christmas comedy “Deck the Halls” (2006) and the following year he voiced the sidekick of Jerry Seinfeld’s lead in his animated “Bee Movie” (2007), a box office success despite backlash over its aggressive marketing. Broderick again played midlife crisis with aplomb in Helen Hunt’s directorial debut “Then She Found Me” (2008) and went on to enjoy a heavy year of film releases including Peter Tolan’s comedy “Finding Amanda,” where he played a floundering TV producer who sets off to rescue his niece (Brittany Snow) from a life of sin in Las Vegas, as well as “Diminished Capacity” and the slated Kenneth Lonergan drama “Margaret.”
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Henson has played three different characters the police drama series The Bill, the first in 1991, the second in 1998, and the third in 2007. In 2010, he appeared in an episode of the ITVperiod dramaDownton Abbey and appeared in two further episodes in 2013.[3] He also played Randolph Mepstead, the older brother of David Jason’s character in the pilot episode of the 1976 series Lucky Feller.
He played Lemuel ‘Chipper’ Barnet in Space Force series 1 and 2 (1984–85).
Henson married actress Una Stubbs (who incidentally played his sister-in-law Caroline Bishop in EastEnders). The couple had two sons, Joe and Christian, both of whom are composers.
After their divorce He then married ballerina Marguerite Porter, by whom he has a third son, Keaton, a musician and illustrator.
Henson was diagnosed with cancer in 2003. Surgeons removed tumours from around his spleen, but a routine check-up in 2006 showed that other tumours had grown and it would be dangerous to remove them. Henson was put on a regimen of chemotherapy, and worked regularly to raise funds for cancer charities, especially Marie Curie Cancer Care. Nicky Henson died in December 2019 at the age of 74.
Nicky Henson obituary in “The Guardian” in 2019.
Tough and tender marked the acting style of Nicky Henson, who has died after a long illness aged 74. Energetic and ebullient were other critical adjectives flying around a career of more than five decades in revue, musicals, with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and on television (Fawlty Towers and EastEnders) and in films by Roy Boulting (There’s A Girl in My Soup, 1970), Mike Leigh (Vera Drake, 2004) and George Clooney (Syriana, 2005).
The range and variety of his work was astonishing, and seems even more so after taking into account the cancer and serial medical procedures he endured over the last 20 years of his life. But he was like Bobby Vee’s rubber ball that came bouncing back all the time.
It was the director Frank Dunlop who really unleashed his talent when he founded the Young Vic in 1970 and picked Henson as a cornerstone actor – alongside Jim Dale, Denise Coffey and Gary Bond – in a project revitalising classics for a new audience.
Between 1970 and 1973, Henson played in Molière, Goldsmith, Shakespeare and Stoppard, scoring particularly as Pozzo in Waiting for Godot, Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet and Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger. He was also the sado-masochistic housemaid Solange in Jean Genet’s The Maids.
Now ready for take-off, in 1973-74 alone he played in Peter Handke’s enigmatic A Ride Across Lake Constance at the Hampstead theatre and the Mayfair with Alan Howard, Nicola Pagett and Gayle Hunnicutt; Laertes, Bottom (never was bully Bottom bullier) and Petruchio at the Open Air theatre, Regent’s Park; and Buttons to Twiggy’s Cinderella at the London Casino (now the Prince Edward). And on television he starred as a rumbustious Balzac in a three-part study of the novelist’s love life – Prometheus: The Life of Balzac (1975) – with a top cast including Helen Ryan, Rosemary McHale and Elizabeth Spriggs.
Born in London, Nicky was the son of the music hall star and producer Leslie Henson and his third wife, Billie Collins. He was educated at St Bede’s prep school, Eastbourne, and Charterhouse, Godalming, Surrey, before training as a stage manager at Rada. Also a musician, he formed, and played guitar in, a pop group called the Wombats and wrote songs for Cliff Richard and the Shadows.
He made his West End debut in a revue, All Square (1963), at the Vaudeville, with Beryl Reid, Naunton Wayne and Julian Holloway, after Beyond the Fringe had changed the face of the genre.
Before joining the Young Vic he was modestly established in West End musical theatre. He played Mordred in Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot at Drury Lane (1964), with Laurence Harvey and Elizabeth Larner; joined other young hopefuls Francesca Annis and Bill Kenwright in Wolf Mankowitz and John Barry’s Passion Flower Hotel at the Prince of Wales (1965); supported Harry Secombe, Thora Hird and Russ Conway in London Laughs at the Palladium (1966); and spent 18 months in the Martin Starkie/Nevill Coghill musical version of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1968) at the Phoenix with Jessie Evans and Wilfrid Brambell. Henson’s big number was I Have a Noble Cock (“he crows at break of day”).
His early films included the low-budget cult movie Witchfinder General (1968), a graphic tale of torture and persecution in the civil war, starring Vincent Price and Ian Ogilvy, the latter becoming a lifelong friend; There’s A Girl in My Soup, starring Peter Sellers and Goldie Hawn (Henson was Goldie’s rock musician boyfriend); and The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones (1976), Henson succeeding Albert Finney as the athletic lothario in the superior 1963 Tony Richardson version, though Henson’s fellow actors included Joan Collins, Terry-Thomas, and Trevor Howard.Advertisement
After the Young Vic and a 1977 tour – and season at the Savoy – with Shaw’s Man and Superman for the RSC, co-starring Richard Pasco and Susan Hampshire, Henson joined Peter Hall’s National on the South Bank from 1978 to 1980, playing in Chekhov, Edward Bond (The Woman), Middleton and Rowley’s A Fair Quarrel and two Restoration classics directed by Peter Wood, The Double Dealer and The Provok’d Wife. Somehow he squeezed in a reunion with Dunlop for a West End season in the Ben Travers farce Rookery Nook, at Her Majesty’s (1979). This was a play first produced by his father with Tom Walls in the Aldwych farce series in 1926.
His second great farce triumph came in Michael Frayn’s Noises Off (1982) as the ageing juvenile lead Roger Templemain, who can only articulate semi-sensibly while spouting the lines “in character” as the hapless Gary Lejeune. He returned to the RSC for the 1985-86 seasons and gave two fantastic performances as Touchstone in As You Like It, a role usually immune to comic invention but here transformed into a music hall chameleon; and as the frenetic Frank Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor, searching a palpably uninhabited laundry basket for his cuckolder and adopting a ludicrous disguise as a moustachioed little Hitler in a yellow bicycle plastic mac.
In the second series of Fawlty Towers (1979), Henson had played a fruity medallion man Basil suspects of smuggling a woman into his room. He had. She was his mother.
In the subsequent decade, his TV work embraced several mini-series: The Happy Apple (1983), scripted by Keith Waterhouse from a Jack Pulman stage play set in a failing advertisement agency; Thin Air (1988), in which a radio reporter uncovers local corruption; and Kingsley Amis’s The Green Man (1990), Finney leading a cast including Henson, Linda Marlowe, Josie Lawrence and Michael Grandage.
In the 1990s, he appeared as Vershinin in Frank McGuinness’s version of Three Sisters with the Cusack sisters and their father Cyril at the Royal Court; in Ronald Harwood’s Reflected Glory with Finney at the Vaudeville; and on a bill of Frayn playlets and sketches, Alarms and Excursions, at the Gielgud. His final stage role came as the suave vice-chancellor and lead gymnast, Archie, in David Leveaux’s fine National Theatre revival of Stoppard’s Jumpers (with Simon Russell Beale and Essie Davis) on its transfer to the Piccadilly in 2003.
By then he was seriously ill in sustained bursts, but still he managed to make a Shakespeare TV film, A Waste of Shame (2005), with a script by William Boyd that weighed the mystery of the sonnets, and he made that EastEnders appearance as Jack Edwards in 2006, threatening the putative husband of his daughter (“I will hunt you down. With dogs. On horseback.”) He even popped up twice in Downton Abbey (2010 and 2013) as a washed-up music hall artiste, partner in a long-ago double act with Jim Carter’s Carson.
In 2005 the RSC had invited him back to play Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, but he had to quit the role – an ideal one for him – after just one public preview. He knew his life on stage was over, but in 2017 I found him bouncing around still in the interval of a play he had directed at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester. This was John Cleese’s Bang Bang, an adaptation of Feydeau, with Oliver Cotton playing the John Cleese role. He had done it really well.
His last film credits were in The Holly Kane Experiment (2017), a spooky thriller in which he played the sinister nemesis of an obsessive psychologist (Kirsty Averton); and in a low-budget crime thriller, Tango One (2018).
In 1968 Henson married Una Stubbs. After they divorced in 1975, he was in a relationship for five years with the actor Susan Hampshire.
In 1982 he met and married Marguerite Porter, a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet. She sustained him through his illness and survives him, along with their son, Keaton, the two sons from his first marriage, Christian and Joe, and four grandchildren. All three sons are musicians and composers.
• Nicholas Victor Lesley Henson, actor, born 12 May 1945; died 16 December 2019
James Marsters is best known for his role of Spike the Englsh vampire in TV’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. He was born in 1962 in Greenville, California. He played the same character in the spin-off “Angel” until 2004. In 1992 he got his first major role on television in the series “Northern Exposure”. His films include “House on Haunted Hill” and “PS I Love You”. He is also an accomplished singer and mushas performed in a band. James Marster’s website can be accessed here.
TCM Overview:
An attractive bleached blond California native, actor James Marsters honed his craft onstage, training and acting in productions in New York, Chicago and Seattle before hitting Hollywood in the mid-1990s and subsequently landing the breakthrough role of Spike in the popular supernatural series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” The son of a social worker and former minister, Marsters pursued an acting career after high school, and attended nearby Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts as well as NYC’s prestigious Juilliard. Rather than stay in NYC, Marsters made the move to Chicago, where he joined in the city’s noted theater community, working in productions at the Goodman Theater and the Balliwick Repertory, later co-founding the Genesis Theater Company. A versatile and courageous actor, Marsters didn’t shy away from roles that called for a dramatic nude entrance or required him to carry a six-hour epic, taking such assignments in Goodman’s “The Tempest” and Balliwick’s “Incorruptible,” respectively. His drive led him to try other cities, and he ended up in Seattle, working with the American Conservatory Theater and landing guest roles on the series “Northern Exposure” (CBS) in 1992 and 1993.
Dissatisfied with the Seattle scene, Marsters headed to Los Angeles in the mid-90s. He landed the role of 200-year-old vampire William the Bloody (nicknamed ‘Spike’ after his favored weapon) on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in 1997. A former pupil of David Boreanaz’s Angel, Spike wasn’t burdened by the conscience that plagued his lovestruck mentor, and was a welcome villainous addition to the “Buffy” stable of supernatural characters, offering comic relief to the sometimes overearnest series. Marsters’ skillful North London accent and wildly acerbic delivery made lines such as “I love syphilis more than I love you” (delivered to Juliet Landau’s Drucilla, Spike’s girlfriend) all the more enjoyable. Spike’s popularity won the actor a regular spot in the cast in 1999, and in order to counteract his unabashed evil, writers hindered Spike’s murderous glee by adding a plot point that saw the bloodsucker altered by a mysterious group called the Initiative. The result was that whenever Spike did harm, he feels unbearable physical pain. As he became an integral part of the otherworldly teen clan, Spike ironically began to fall for the eponymous slayer (Sarah Michelle Gellar).
As “Buffy” raised his profile, Marsters appeared on the big screen in the 1999 horror thriller “The House on Haunted Hill.” He didn’t abandon stage work despite his TV stardom, starring and contributing to the score of the ambitious drama “The Why” (2000), produced by the Blank Theater Company. Marsters also took his singing and guitar playing talents to the stage with a series of acoustic club performances in 2000.
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
Jane Fonda is part of a Hollywood dynasty. Her father was the great film actor Henry Fonda while her brother is Pegter Fonda now best remembered for his role in “Easy Rider”. Jane was born in 1937 in Hollywood. Her film career now stretches 50 years from her film debut in “Tall Story” with Anthony Perkins in 1960. She has won Two Oscars in the 1970’s for “Klute” and “Coming Home”. Among her othert major film highlights are”Barefoot in the Park”, “They Shoot Horses Don;t They”, Julia” and “The China Syndrome”. Her most recent film is “Peace, Love and Misunderstanding”. Her website can be accessed here.
There were for a while so few good roles for women in films that the selectors of Oscar nominees had a job to come up with five names. When Louise Fletcher was nominated for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” the previous year’s winner Ellen Burstyn appeared on TV to ask the members of the Academy not to vote in this category – since in fact she said the five nominees had all played supporting roles. In the case of Miss Fletcher this may strictly speaking be true, but her superb portrayal of ‘Nurse Ratched’ seemed to dominate the film. It was a notably well acted movie but Flecher’s performance had it been on the stage, was one that you would want to tell your grandchildren about.” – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years”. (1972)
Louise Fletcher won an Academy Award for her first major film role as Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. She was born in 1934 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her father was a Episcopal minister and bother her parents were deaf. Her first film role was in 1963 in the military air-force drama “A Gathering of Eagles” where she shared a scene with the leading lady Mary Peach. She did not make another film for nine years when she made “Thieves” in 1974. Director Milos Forman saw her in the film and offered her the role of Nurse Ratched. She has worked consistently but mainly in supporting roles. Her other films include “Brainstorm” with Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood and Cliff Robertson and “Flowers in the Attic”. Her most recent film is “The Last Sin Eater”. Her Oscar acceptance clip can be viewed here.
TCM overview:
An American film and television actress of considerable and quiet strength, Louise Fletcher won the Academy Award in 1975 as the unforgettable, iron-willed Nurse Ratched in Milos Forman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The role and subsequent honors were seen by the press as the high point of Fletcher’s screen career, since none of the projects that followed, which included “Exorcist II: The Heretic” (1979), “Brainstorm” (1983) and “Invaders from Mars” (1987) matched its box office or critical returns. However, Fletcher worked steadily after “Cuckoo’s Nest,” earning Emmy nominations for television turns and accepting the notion of “the Oscar curse” with patience and good humor, confident in the knowledge that she had created one of cinema’s most enduring villains.
Born Estelle Louise Fletcher in Birmingham, AL on July 22, 1934, she was one of four children by Episcopal minister Robert Capers Fletcher and his wife, Estelle Caldwell. Both of Fletcher’s parents were deaf, though she and all of her siblings were born without hearing loss. She was taught to speak by a hearing aunt, who also introduced her to acting. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in drama, she traveled to the West Coast with her roommates, and eventually found herself in Los Angeles without the funds to return home. Fletcher took a job as a receptionist, which paid for acting classes.
Fletcher made her onscreen debut in the late 1950s, landing guest roles on such popular series as “Maverick” (ABC, 1957-1962) and “The Untouchables” (ABC, 1959-1963). However, she left the business in 1963 to raise two sons by her marriage to producer Jerry Bick. A decade passed before she returned to acting, first in the 1974 TV movie “Can Ellen Be Saved” (ABC), and then as bank robber Bert Remsen’s duplicitous sister in “Thieves Like Us” (1974), a remake of the 1948 film directed by Robert Altman and co-produced by her husband. Altman later tailored the role of country singer Linnea Reese for Fletcher – the role even called for her to have two deaf children – but after a falling out with Bick, Altman cast Lily Tomlin as Reese.
Back stage at the ceremony, Forman told Fletcher that after the success of “Cuckoo’s Nest,” he and his cast would next make major flops. Unfortunately, his prediction came true. Forman’s next film was the sprawling historical epic “Ragtime” (1980), while Fletcher was cast as a scientist in John Boorman’s critically reviled “Exorcist II: The Heretic” (1979). Its failure seemed to set the tone for Fletcher’s subsequent career, which was spent largely in forgettable features like “The Magician of Lublin” (1979) and Lewis Teague’s “The Lady in Red” (1979), which cast her as Anna Sage, the madam who helped the FBI track down John Dillinger. In the 1980s, she settled into a series of roles in several cult science fiction films, including Michael Laughlin’s unsettling “Strange Behavior” (1981), its semi-sequel “Strange Invaders” (1983) and Douglas Trumbull’s “Brainstorm” (1983), which was all but forgotten in the scandal surrounding the death of its star, Natalie Wood, who drowned during production in November 1981.
There were a number of missed opportunities for Fletcher in the 1980s. She was originally considered for Shirley MacLaine’s role in “Terms of Endearment” (1983) and her scenes were deleted from Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984). She instead settled for character parts in largely forgettable efforts like “Nobody’s Fool” (1986), Tobe Hooper’s woebegone remake of “Invaders from Mars” (1986), and the lurid film version of V.C. Andrews’ pulp Gothic novel, “Flowers in the Attic” (1987), which earned her a Saturn Award nomination as the film’s villain, a religiously fanatical grandmother who tormented her daughter and grandchildren, the former of which were kept prisoner in her mansion’s attic for years. Her turn in “Invaders from Mars” earned her a Razzie nomination from the Golden Raspberry Awards, which gave her the dubious distinction of earning laurels from Hollywood’s most celebrated and least desired award groups.
However, director Milos Forman had seen Fletcher in “Thieves” and wanted her for a major role in his next picture, an adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Forman made Fletcher audition repeatedly over a six-month period, during which nearly every major actress in Hollywood refused the part of Nurse Ratched, the martinet-like head nurse at a mental hospital. Fletcher eventually won the role, and collaborated closely with Forman to shape the character into a three-dimensional person, rather than the monster as depicted on the page. Fletcher’s turn brought a level of humanity and vulnerability to Ratched, which earned critical acclaim, as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. When Fletcher won the award, she thanked her parents for their support in American Sign Language, creating an enduring moment of genuine emotion in Oscar history. Fletcher also collected a Golden Globe and BAFTA for her iconic performance.
Louise Fletcher
The 1990s saw Fletcher working steadily in both low-budget efforts and Hollywood features. Most were again largely dismissible, though she did earn a following as a steely spiritual leader in numerous episodes of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” (syndicated, 1993-99). There was also an Emmy nomination for guest appearances on “Picket Fences” (CBS, 1992-96) as Marlee Matlin’s estranged mother, and a Satellite nod for the HBO drama “Breast Men” (1997) as lead David Schwimmer’s mother. In 2004, Fletcher earned her second Emmy nomination as an embittered piano teacher who still harbored regrets over her failed music career on the religious-themed series, “Joan of Arcadia” (CBS, 2003-05). Television continued to provide her with choice roles in subsequent years, including the physician mother of Deanne Bray’s Emma Coolidge, who could turn sound into physical force on “Heroes” (NBC, 2006-2010), William H. Macy’s incarcerated and irascible mother on “Shameless” (Showtime, 2011- ) and Tim Daly’s mom on “Private Practice” (ABC, 2007- ). The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Louise Fletcher, the imposing, steely-eyed actress who won an Academy Award for her role as the tyrannical Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” died on Friday at her home in Montdurausse, France. She was 88.
The death was confirmed by her agent, David Shaul. He did not cite the cause.
Ms. Fletcher was 40 and largely unknown to the public when she was cast as the head administrative nurse at an Oregon mental institution in the 1975 film version of “Cuckoo’s Nest.” The film, directed by Milos Forman and based on a Ken Kesey novel, won a best actress trophy for Ms. Fletcher and four other Oscars, including for best picture, for Mr. Forman as best director and for Jack Nicholson as best actor.
Ms. Fletcher’s acceptance speech stood out that night, not only because she teasingly thanked voters for hating her but also because she used American Sign Language in thanking her parents for “teaching me to have a dream.”
The American Film Institute later named Nurse Ratched as one of the most memorable villains in film history and the second most notable female villain, surpassed only by the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz.”
But at the time of the “Cuckoo’s Nest” release, Ms. Fletcher was frustrated by the buttoned-up nature of her character. “I envied the other actors tremendously,” she said in a 1975 interview with The New York Times, referring to her fellow cast members, many of whom were playing mental patients. “They were so free, and I had to be so controlled.”
Estelle Louise Fletcher was born on July 22, 1934, in Birmingham, Ala., one of four hearing children of Robert Capers Fletcher, an Episcopal minister, and the former Estelle Caldwell, both of whom had been deaf since childhood. She studied drama at the University of North Carolina and moved to Los Angeles after graduation.
She later told journalists that she had trouble finding work because she was so tall — 5 feet 10 inches — and was often cast in westerns, where her height was an advantage. Of her first 20 or so screen roles in the late 1950s and early ’60s, about half were in television westerns, including “Wagon Train,” “Maverick” and “Bat Masterson.”
Ms. Fletcher married Jerry Bick, a film producer, in 1959. They had two sons, and she retired from acting for more than a decade to raise them.
She returned to movies in Robert Altman’s 1974 film “Thieves Like Us” as a woman who coldly turns in her brother to the police. It was her appearance in that film that led Mr. Forman to offer her the role in “Cuckoo’s Nest.”
“I was caught by surprise when Louise came onscreen,” he recalled of watching “Thieves Like Us.” “I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had a certain mystery, which I thought was very, very important for Nurse Ratched.”
Reviewing “Cuckoo’s Nest” in The New Yorker, Pauline Kael declared Ms. Fletcher’s “a masterly performance.”
“We can see the virginal expectancy — the purity — that has turned into puffy-eyed self-righteousness,” Ms. Kael wrote. “She thinks she’s doing good for people, and she’s hurt — she feels abused — if her authority is questioned.”
Ms. Fletcher is often cited as an example of the Oscar curse — the observed phenomenon that winning an Academy Award for acting does not always lead to sustained movie stardom — but she did maintain a busy career in films and on television into her late 70s.
She had a lead role as the Linda Blair character’s soft-spoken psychiatrist in “Exorcist II: The Heretic” (1977) and was notable in the ensemble comedy “The Cheap Detective” (1978), riffing on Ingrid Bergman’s film persona. She also starred with Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood as a workaholic scientist in “Brainstorm” (1983). But she seemed to be relegated to roles with limited screen time, especially when the character was very different from her Nurse Ratched persona.
After a turn as an inscrutable U.F.O. bigwig in “Strange Invaders” (1983), she appeared in “Firestarter” (1984) as a fearful farm wife; the police drama “Blue Steel” (1990) as Jamie Lee Curtis’s drab mother; “2 Days in the Valley” (1996) as a compassionate Los Angeles landlady; and “Cruel Intentions” (1999) as Ryan Phillippe’s genteel aunt.
Only when she played to stereotype, as she did in “Flowers in the Attic” (1987), as an evil matriarch who sets out to poison her four inconvenient young grandchildren, did she find herself in starring roles again. That film was “the worst experience I’ve ever had making a movie,” she told a Dragoncon audience in 2009. She had told the director that she didn’t want her character to be a heavy.
Later in her career, she played recurring characters on several television series, including “Star Trek: Deep Space 9” (she was an alien cult leader from 1993 to 1999) and “Shameless” (as William H. Macy’s foulmouthed convict mother). She also made an appearance as Liev Schreiber’s affable mother in the romantic drama “A Perfect Man” (2013).
Her survivors include her two sons, John and Andrew Bick; her sister, Roberta Ray; and a granddaughter. Ms. Fletcher and Mr. Bick divorced in 1977.
In addition to her home in Montdurausse, a town in southern France, Ms. Fletcher had a home in Los Angeles.
Ms. Fletcher, whose most famous character was a portrait of sternness, often recalled smiling constantly and pretending that everything was perfect when she was growing up, in an effort to protect her non-hearing parents from bad news.
Pretending wasn’t all bad, however, she acknowledged, at least in terms of her profession. That same year she told the journalist Rex Reed, “I feel like I know real joy from make-believe
Ben Murphy is best known for the very popular television series “Alias Smith & Jones” with the late Pete Duel which ran from 1972 to 1973. He was born in Arkansas in 1942. When the series filded, he starred in several other shows. In 1983 he starred in the very popular TV mini-series “The Winds of War”. His film career has not been extensive but he was in “The Graduate”, “Your’s Mine and Ours” and “To Protect and Serve”. Ben Murphy’s website can be accessed here.
“Wikipedia” entry:
Ben Murphy was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Nadine (Steele) and Benjamin E. Castleberry. When his mother remarried in 1956, Ben was adopted by his stepfather, Patrick Henry Murphy.[3] Murphy grew up in Clarendon Hills, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.[1] An alumnus of Benet Academy in Lisle, Illinois,[citation needed] he attended eight colleges before deciding to pursue an acting career.
Murphy appeared in a supporting role in The Name of the Game, a series featuring a rotating leading cast including Tony Franciosa,Gene Barry, and Robert Stack. Murphy played a semi regular role as ‘Joseph Sample’ assistant to Robert Stack’s leading character ‘Dan Farrell’ in Stack’s segments of the show. From 1971 to 1973, he starred in Alias Smith and Jones with Pete Duel (1971–72) andRoger Davis (1972–73). After Alias Smith and Jones, Murphy joined Lorne Greene in the 1973 ABC crime drama Griff. He played detective S. Michael “Mike” Murdock, assistant to Greene’s character, Wade “Griff” Griffin, a Los Angeles retired police officer turned private eye. The series had some notable guest stars but folded after thirteen weeks. In the 1983–84 season, Murphy co-starred with Marshall Colt in the ABC drama series Lottery!. Murphy played Patrick Sean Flaherty, the man who informed lottery winners of their stroke of fortune, and Colt, formerly with James Arness on NBC‘s short-lived crime drama,McClain’s Law, portrayed the Internal Revenue Service agent, Eric Rush, who made sure the winners pay the U.S. government up front.
In 1985, Murphy co-starred as department store heir, Paul Berrenger, on the short-lived drama, Berrenger’s. His character was at odds with his former wife, Gloria (Andrea Marcovicci) and his own father, Simon (Sam Wanamaker) due to his romance with executive, Shane Bradley (Yvette Mimieux). Murphy starred in his own series Gemini Man, in which he played a secret agent who could become invisible for 15 minutes a day through the use of a special wristwatch. However, the show did not run beyond a single season. Murphy has since appeared in guest-starring parts, including having been a murder suspect in CBS‘s Cold Case.
The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
Gary Sinise was born in 1955 in Illinois. He is part of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago. Among his films are “Of Mice and Men “, “Forrest Gump” and “Ransom”. On television he has starred in “CSI: NY”.
In 2004, he began his first regular television series, in the crime drama CSI: New York, in which he plays Detective Mac Taylor. He was credited as a producer from season two onwards and wrote the storyline of an episode. Several episodes have allowed Sinise to demonstrate his musical prowess, including a season-two episode where Mac Taylor plays the bass guitar in a jazz club with musicians Kimo and Carol Williams and Danny Gottlieb, members of the Lt. Dan Band, which Sinise and Kimo Williams co-founded in 2003. The band is named for Sinise’s character in Forrest Gump.
Apart from his television and movie work, Sinise is the host in the video for the Epcot ride Mission: SPACE, at Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida, and a model for Baume & Mercier watches. He co-founded Operation Iraqi Children. Sinise said, “Iraq is in the news every day, and most of it is bad. But there are some positive stories. And how our soldiers are rebuilding schools and helping kids is one of them.”
In November 2009, Sinise narrated the highly acclaimed World War II in HD on the History Channel. In 2010, he narrated the World War II documentary Missions That Changed The War on the Military Channel. In late 2002, he started the Cadillac commercials starting with the 2002–2003 Season’s Best commercial and has been with the Break Through campaign since it started the campaign in the 2002 Super Bowl with Led Zeppelin‘s “Rock and Roll” then ended in late 2006. In 2009, Sinise lent his voice talents in the Thomas Nelson audio Bible production known as The Word of Promise, playing the character of David.
On Oct 30, 2017, Sinise was selected as Grand Marshal of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade on January 1, 2018.
Sinise is a supporter of various veterans’ organizations, both personally and through the Lt. Dan Band. He frequently performs on USO tours at military bases around the world, and volunteered for the National Vietnam Veterans Arts Museum now called the National Veterans Art Museum. On June 8, 2011, he put on a space suit to become one of the few people to fly in a U-2 spy plane up to 70,000 feet (21,000 m). Sinise is also on the Advisory Council of Hope For The Warriors, a national nonprofit dedicated to provide a full cycle of nonmedical care to combat-wounded service members, their families, and families of the fallen from each military branch. Sinise narrates the audiobook of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” which was released on April 13, 2011. In December 2011, Sinise was the narrator at the Candelight Processional at Disneyland. In August 2012, Sinise was honored at the United States Navy Memorial, by Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (MCPON) Rick West, and was made an honorary U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer for his efforts in helping veterans. On August 29, 2013, he was named an honorary Marine by the Commandant of the Marine Corps. In 2006, Sinise began co-hosting the National Memorial Day Concert on the Mall in Washington, D.C., with actor and Illinois native Joe Mantegna. He serves as the national spokesperson for the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial and spends much of his time raising awareness for the memorial and other veterans’ service organizations. In 2012, he was honored by the Joe Foss Institute for his dedication to veterans. In 2013, he was awarded the third highest honor within the Department of the Army Civilian Awards, the Outstanding Civilian Service Award, for substantial contributions to the U.S. Army community through his work with the Gary Sinise Foundation. Each year the foundation raises over $30 million which it uses to benefit military veterans, including building smart homes for those who are disabled. He participated in Troopathon VI for 2013, as he has in the past, to help raise money for care packages for American troops. He received 2015’s Sylvanus Thayer Award, awarded by the West Point Association of Graduates to a non-West Point graduate whose character, service, and achievements reflect the ideals prized by the U.S. Military Academy.
