The striking, steel-eyed actress Louise Fletcher, who won an Academy Award for her role as tyrannical Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, died Friday at her home in the town of Monduraus in the south of France. I was. she was 88 years old.
Her death was confirmed by her agent, David Shoal. who gave no cause. Fletcher also had a house in Los Angeles.
Ms. Fletcher, 40, was largely unknown when One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was promoted to supervising nurse at a psychiatric hospital in Oregon. The film, directed by Milos Forman and based on the popular novel by Ken Kezy, won Ms. Fletcher an award for Best Actress. and four other Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Jack Nicholson as the rebellious psychotic McMurphy), Best Adapted Screenplay (Bo Goldman and Lawrence Hauber).
Fletcher’s acceptance speech was outstanding That night — not only because she teased and thanked voters who hated her, but because she thanked her deaf parents in American Sign Language for “teaching them to dream.”
The American Film Institute later named Nurse Ratched one of the most memorable villains in film history and named her the second most famous female villain after the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.
However, when “Cuckoo’s Nest” was released, Ms. Fletcher was frustrated with her character’s buttoned-up nature. “I was very envious of the other actors.” She said in a 1975 New York Times interviewreferring to her fellow cast members, most of whom played psychotic patients.
Estelle Louise Fletcher was born on July 22, 1934 in Birmingham, Alabama. Bishop Reverend Robert Capers Fletcher and Esther (Caldwell) Fletcher are one of his four deaf children. Both of her parents were deaf since childhood. She studied theater at the University of North Carolina and after graduating she moved to Los Angeles.
She later told journalists that she was so tall (5 feet 10 inches) that she had trouble finding work outside of Westerns, where height was an advantage. Of his first 20 or so film roles, about half were in westerns like “Wagon Train,” “Maverick,” and “Bat Masterson.”
Fletcher married film producer Jerry Bick in 1959. They had her two sons, John and Andrew.
Fletcher and Bick divorced in 1977. her sister, Roberta Ray; and her granddaughter.
She returned to film in 1974 “Thieves Like Us” by Robert Altman As a woman who calmly hands over her brother to the police. It was her appearance in that film that led Mr. Forman to offer her her role in “The Cuckoo’s Nest.”
“I was amazed when Louise came onto the screen,” Foreman recalled seeing “Thieves Like Us.” “She couldn’t take her eyes off her. She had a certain mystery, which I thought was very important to Nurse Ratched.”
Pauline Kale, reviewing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for The New Yorker, declared Ms. Fletcher’s “brilliant performance”.
“You can see that the expectation of virginity – chastity – has turned into puffy self-righteousness,” Kayle writes. She said, “She thinks she’s doing good things for people, and it hurts her when her authority is questioned. She feels abused.” ”
Ms. Fletcher is often cited as an example of the Oscar curse — the phenomenon that winning an Academy Award for acting doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be a movie star — but she didn’t make movies until her late 70s. and maintained a busy career in television.
She starred as the soft-spoken psychiatrist of the Linda Blair character in The Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), rose to prominence in the ensemble comedy Cheap Detective (1978), and starred in the Ingrid Bergman film I riffed on the persona of She also starred as a workaholic scientist with Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood in “Brainstorm” (1983). , she was mostly relegated to roles with limited screen time.
After becoming a mysterious UFO tycoon in “Strange Invaders” (1983), she appeared as the fearsome farm wife in “Firestarter” (1984). She played Jamie Lee Curtis’ drab mother in the police drama Blue Steel (1990). 2 Days in the Valley (1996) played a caring Los Angeles landlady. She appeared in Ryan Phillippe’s “Cruel Intentions” (1999) as the classy aunt.
Only when she played the malevolent stereotype, as in “Flowers in the Attic” (1987), as an evil matriarch who attempts to poison her four inconvenient young grandchildren, did she return to the starring role. I realized that it worked. and that movie, She told the Dragoncon audience It was 2009’s “Worst Experience Ever Making a Film”.
Later in her career, she starred in several roles, including Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (where she was the leader of an alien cult from 1993 to 1999) and Shameless (William H. Macy’s abusive prisoner mother). Played a recurring character in the television series. She also appeared as Liev Schreiber’s affable mother in the romantic drama The Perfect Man (2013). She recently appeared in her two episodes of the Netflix comedy series Girlboss.
Ms. Fletcher’s most famous character was a stern figure, but she often remembers growing up pretending that everything was perfect, always smiling, to protect her deaf parents from bad news. I was.
“The price was too high for me.” In a 1977 interview with The Ladies’ Home Journal, she said:“Because it wasn’t just pretending that everything was fine. It made me feel like it had to be.”
Pretending wasn’t all bad, but at least when it came to her profession, she admitted. I feel like I am,” he said.
Mike Ives contributed to the report.