Joan Cusack

Perhaps most viewers relate her to her incredible ability to make people laugh. Something that should not make you forget her dramatic attributes. With this interpretive ambivalence, Joan accumulates endless titles in her career, also helped by the fact that she has always been a secondary actress. However, she has never been one to go unnoticed on stage. She is therefore a supporting actress from head to toe.

Joan was born on October 11, 1962 in New York. She is the second of five siblings. All of them have dedicated themselves to acting to a greater or lesser extent, something they inherited from her father, actor Dick Cusack . Joan and John Cusack are the best known of the family –they have worked together on a dozen titles–, and both have shared the bill with some of their brothers in titles such as Business of War (2008) with Bill Cusack or High Fidelity (2000) . with Susie Cusack . Joan has done theater since she was little and studied acting in Chicago, where she grew up. Her film debut came in 1980 with a small role in Cutting Loose.. She had just started in the cinema when she decided to take a break to co-found a comedy group with Bonnie Hunt and Holly Wortell. And it is that, above all, Joan is funny, and very good, by the way. After her experience with the group, she returned to the cinema in 1983 to participate as a secondary in Class . They were years where titles related to adolescents followed one another. This film was the first in which she worked with her brother, and they both coincided with her father. The first title of any relevance came to Joan in 1987 from the hand of James L. Brooks in On the edge of the news . The funny character of her worked in the production of the informative program directed by Holly Hunter. Timely, witty, scathing, she once again showed her most sympathetic side in Armas de mujer (1988). Her portrayal of Melanie Griffith ‘s somewhat outlandish secretary earned her an Oscar nomination. And it is that as she herself has said on some occasion, she seems perfect to play the friend “of”, and especially the somewhat bizarre and peculiar friend “of”.

Joan’s career was still going strong when, in 1991, she decided to collaborate in the writing of the script – a task she has not repeated to date – for The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez , a musical version of El gabinete del doctor Caligari , where she also had a paper. Two years later, she married attorney Richard Burke. The marriage has two children, Dylan (1997) and Miles (2000). But before her children came into the world, she continued her career as an actress, which offered her one of the most outlandish characters of her career, the peculiar nanny of the sinister The Addams Family. The Tradition Continues (1993). Two years after her came one of the funniest roles in her filmography, and she was given it by the hand of a Spaniard, Fernando Trueba .. Her interpretation of Antonio Banderas ‘ secretary in Two Much (1995) is simply hilarious.

The arrival of her first child did cause a small break in Joan’s career. She went after being nominated for an Oscar again for her work as the fiancée of newly out-of-closet Kevin Kline in In & Out (1997). Until 1999, Joan did not return to the cinema, although she did, showing that man does not live by smiles alone. She was herself in the haunting Arlington Road , where she played the creepy wife of the evil Tim Robbins . All proof that typecasting is for many, but not for her. Thanks to Robbins, she returned to show the most dramatic side of her in Down the Curtain(1999), about the Broadway of the 30s. And it is that these choral dramas with renowned actors such as her brother John, Bill Murray , Vanessa Redgrave and Susan Sarandon , are good for the actress, as she demonstrated again in Friends with money (2006) where he coincided with Jennifer Aniston , Catherine Keener and Frances McDormand . Any other would have been diluted among so many recognized names, something that has not happened to Joan.

However, despite having shown that he is worth a lot in drama, his qualities for comedy are special, as the television series What About Joan demonstrated . To date it is the only work of her as a protagonist and, unfortunately, it did not last over time. During 9 episodes, Joan played a rather unbearable high school teacher due to her insecurities. In any case, Joan’s extensive and varied career continues apace. She does not lack dramas or comedies. Something logical, on the other hand, because you have to know how to appreciate that very few sell both sides of the coin for the price of one.