Anjelica Huston

Belonging to a lineage of cinema, Anjelica is the daughter of John Huston , a renowned director who won an Oscar in 1948 with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , and the granddaughter of Walter Huston , a successful actor in the 1940s, who starred in the mentioned film of his son. She couldn’t escape family tradition and at the age of 18 she made her acting debut on Broadway with a small role in “Hamlet” (1969). That same year she also began her journey on the big screen: she participated as a supporting actress in A Walk for Love and Death , a film directed by her own father.

After these jobs, she moved to New York to try her luck as a model. There she met Jack Nicholson , with whom she began a relationship that would last until 1989. She returned to the cinema with his hand: in 1975 she made a small performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , in which her boyfriend was the protagonist. The following year she was cast in The Last Tycoon , a film by Elia Kazan based on the unfinished work by Francis Scott Fitzgerald , starring Robert De Niro and also featuring Jack.

In 1981 he acted again with his partner in the remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice . However, her most successful collaboration was four years later, under her father’s orders, with Prizzi’s Honor ; she was Maerose Prizzi, a woman abandoned by Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson). Her performance earned her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. From that moment, Anjelica began to receive roles with much more prominence.

One of them was the one he did in Woody Allen ‘s Crimes and Misdemeanors , the first collaboration between the two. In this play, she played a spiteful lover who harassed the film’s protagonist. This torn role earned her a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress. The following year she reached the pinnacle of her career with her work in The Grifters , a Stephen Frears film produced by Martin Scorsese . Here, in the tradition of film noir, Anjelica was the mother of Roy Dillon ( John Cusack), a professional con man specializing in petty deception who is dragged by his girlfriend to commit major crimes. The anger and hatred that Roy’s mother felt towards her son’s girlfriend allowed our actress to develop all her talent, something that was recognized by the Academy with her Oscar nomination.

From that moment, our actress began to alternate prestigious works, such as the Manhattan Murder Mystery , again with Allen, or Crossing the Darkness , with other lighter ones such as the horror comedy The Addams Family . In 1999, Agnes Browne ventured to direct , following in the footsteps behind her father’s camera: a dream come true, a film well received by critics -it received the young jury prize at the San Sebastian Festival- that told the story of a humble family from Dublin forced to face the loss of the father and head of the family. Despite the fact that she has not continued her career as a director, Anjelica demonstrated with this work that she perfectly knew the language of cinema.

In recent years, she has once again focused on secondary roles both in film and on television, not without recognition: this is demonstrated by her Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the television movie Iron Angels . Anjelica Huston is an actress who has known how to take advantage of the opportunity that her last name gave her to carve out an important place in the Hollywood industry. Starting from the bottom, as a supporting actress, she has ended up getting leading roles that have catapulted her to success, especially between the late 80s and the 90s. Her presence and her ability to create strong characters are the traits that have managed to make her a great actress, thus overcoming the limitations that, a priori, she had due to her physique.