Famous role showed potential of actor’s otherwise wasted talents
LOUISE FLETCHER, 1934-2022
Louise Fletcher gained cinematic immortality through her portrayal of the terrifyingly cold and manipulative Nurse Ratched in Milos Forman’s 1975 adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in which she was memorably opposed by Jack Nicholson as RP McMurphy, a small-time crook incarcerated in a mental hospital who attempts to lead a rebellion against her authority.
Louise Fletcher holds the Academy Award she won for her leading role in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in 1976Credit: AP
While the film proved an enormous success – it became only the second film to make a clean sweep of the five most prestigious prizes at the 1976 Academy Awards, including that of best actress for Fletcher – it also proved the sole high point in a career which saw her talents sadly wasted by an industry that seemed to have no place for her.
Estelle Louise Fletcher was born on July 22, 1934, in Birmingham, Alabama, the daughter of an Episcopalian minister and his wife. Both her parents were deaf and Louise was taught to speak by an aunt who also encouraged her interest in acting. On graduating from the University of North Carolina, she travelled in the late 1950s to Los Angeles, where she took an office job while studying acting at night.
Due to her height (5ft 10in), she initially found herself cast primarily in Western television series, leavened by appearances in such popular shows as The Untouchables and Perry Mason.
On her marriage in 1959 to the agent Jerry Bick and subsequent birth of their two sons, Fletcher retired from acting following her one feature film role of this period, A Gathering of Eagles (1963).
Ten years later, Fletcher returned to television work before being cast in Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us (1974). Her supporting performance as a tired, no-nonsense housewife in Depression-era Mississippi made a strong impression, leading Altman to devise a character based on Fletcher for his next film, Nashville (1975).
But following a falling-out with United Artists, Altman took the picture elsewhere, handing the part to Lily Tomlin. Following a secondary role in Russian Roulette (1975), Fletcher put herself in contention for the part for which she will always be remembered.
Interviewed on set, Fletcher remarked of Nurse Ratched, “I see her as a human being who – she’s not a medieval witch. I see her as a woman who believes totally in what she’s doing. She believes that what she’s doing is absolutely right and best for all the patients.”
Her success at the 1976 Academy Awards, during which she thanked her parents in sign language, proved remarkably short-lived. Her next film was Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), directed by John Boorman and starring Richard Burton. While the film was an artistic and financial failure, it was at least a notorious failure, which is more than can be said for Fletcher’s subsequent films. The Cheap Detective (1978) saw her impersonating Ingrid Bergman in a puerile Neil Simon parody of various Humphrey Bogart films, after which she provided solid support to Hal Holbrook in the underrated Natural Enemies.
Academy Award-winning actress Louise Fletcher at an opening on Oct. 6, 2012. Fletcher died at age 88. Credit: AP
Her fortunes fared no better in the 1980s, her small role in the Stephen King adaptation Firestarter (1984) being followed by a part as a cemetery director in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America that same year which was cut from the American-release print (though subsequently restored in the “extended” version).
Nonetheless, by this stage, and with, as she said, bills to pay, Fletcher continued to work busily in television, enjoying some success as Kai Wynn in the series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999), while all too often being required to play pale imitations of her most celebrated character.
Fletcher is survived by her two sons.
UK Telegraph
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