Faye Dunaway

Born on January 14, 1941, on a farm in Bascom, Florida, Dorothy Faye Dunaway is the daughter of Grace April Smith, a housewife, and John MacDowell, an Army sergeant. When the future actress was 17 years old, the marriage divorced. Despite the trauma, Faye moved on and studied Drama at the Universities of Boston and Florida; She also competed in various beauty pageants.

Like so many other vocational actors, she feels a passion for the stage, which witnessed her first triumphs, after playing the daughter of Santo Tomas Moro, in a production of “A man for eternity.” She soon became a renowned performer among New York connoisseurs, attracting the attention of veteran film director Otto Preminger, who cast her in one of the starring roles in The Desired Night , the actress’s brilliant debut, as a rancher pressured to sell. his property. The young interpreter did not detract from the screen along with Michael Caine and Jane Fonda , she won the BAFTA for the most promising actress, and she was even nominated for the Golden Globe in the same category.

Shortly after, she was one of the protagonists of El suceso , from 1967, directed by Elliot Silverstein , where she played the only girl in the quartet of hippies who, during a night of partying, ends up kidnapping a retired mobster, played by Anthony Quinn . That same year he sent some impressive photos taken by future filmmaker Curtis Hanson to Warren Beatty , executive producer and future lead of Bonnie and Clyde , who had considered the aforementioned Fonda for the lead female role, but she lived in France. and turned down the role, and also Cher, Ann Margret and even her sister, Shirley MacLaine. Just by looking at the image of Dunaway, he realized that she was the ideal actress to play a famous real criminal, Bonnie Parker, the waitress with a boring life who, after meeting Clyde Barrow, forms with him the couple of robbers with the greatest impact in the press of the time. The film directed by Arthur Penn won two Oscars for photography and for supporting actress ( Estelle Parsons ), and although the leading lady was also nominated, she had a hard time unseating the one who was finally the winner, none other than Katharine Hepburn , who had shot Guess who’s coming tonight .

In any case, she had become the most in-demand star of her age, so she was recruited to head Steve McQueen ‘s The Thomas Crown Affair , where she was the insurance company investigator snooping on the activities of a millionaire and glove thief. white. In the later remake, The Thomas Crown Secret , she makes a cameo appearance. One of her greats, Elia Kazan , gave her what was to be another of her best jobs, the secretary and lover of an executive ( Kirk Douglas ), in The Compromise .

In addition to working with Beatty and McQueen, Dunaway shared the screen with the other leading male stars of the 1970s, including Dustin Hoffman , in the revisionist western Little Big Man , again under Penn’s direction, Robert Redford , in the impressive thriller The Three Days of the Condor , Jon Voight , in the tear-jerking remake of Champion , Paul Newman (and also again with McQueen) in the catastrophist The Burning Colossus , and especially with Jack Nicholson , in Chinatown , achieved homage to classic film noir. ” Bonnie and Clyde andChinatown were shot before George Lucas redefined the major studio system with Star Wars . It quickly went into the equation that the more you invest, the more profit you will have,” explains the actress.

In 1974 she married Peter Wolf, singer and leader of the rock group The J. Geils Band. After her divorce, she ended up with Terry O’Neill, a British photographer with whom she supposedly had a son, Liam, although much later the actress would publicly confess that she is actually adopted.

High titles are not lacking in Dunaway’s filmography, who was a Jew who escaped Nazi horror with a thousand of her own on a ship in The Voyage of the Damned , the Machiavellian Milady in The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers , by Richard Lester, a television producer capable of anything to thrive on the Network. An unforgiving world , a photographer with paranormal visions in The Eyes of Laura Mars , and even the legendary Joan Crawford in the biopic Dearest Mom .

After the roaring ’70s, Dunaway’s career languished quite a bit, especially after failed titles like The Wicked Lady , The First Deadly Sin , the unconvincing adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel Guilty of Innocence , or the infamous Supergirl , where she played background as evil witch.

Originally an Episcopalian religion, at the beginning of the 90s he announced his conversion to Catholicism, because he had been very impressed by the faith of the priest William Alfred, who had collaborated in the implementation of his first play, and was the architect of its selection . “I like to pray and I go to mass,” she commented in interviews.

Although some of the films from the last stage of his career are of some interest – The Handmaid’s Tale , by Volker Schlöndorff , The Drunkard , by Barbet Schroeder , Sealed Chamber , by James Foley , Joan of Arc (1999) , by Luc Besson , The alligator trap , by Kevin Spacey -, has not finished raising its head.

It even lavishes itself on junk like In a night of chiaro di luna , by Lina Wertmüller , the unspeakable horror film co-produced between the United States and Argentina , El devourador de sueños, and the erotic and boring Spanish film En brazos de la mujer mature . It proves once again that Hollywood has no mercy on most actresses when they reach a certain age.

Lacking roles and prospects, Faye Dunaway has directed a short, The Yellow Bird , and has long prepared her first feature, Master Class , in which she plans to play the celebrated soprano Maria Callas . Much was made of her when she was outraged at the prospect of singer and teen star Hilary Duff being able to star in the Bonnie and Clyde remake.. “Couldn’t they have at least cast a real actress?” Dunaway commented, without mincing words. Duff was relentless in her statements: “My fans who are going to see the movie don’t know who she is. I didn’t know her either. I understand that I would be upset too if I looked like her now.” For now, the project is a little stopped.