We Rob Banks! Faye Dunaway's Arc

Even in a false start like Otto Preminger's overblown Hurry Sundown (1967), Faye Dunaway was lucky enough to work with Michael Caine, Jane Fonda, and Diahann Carroll.

And then came Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

In it, Dunaway smolders. Dunaway takes the cake. Dunaway blasts her way into stardom. Dunaway is so good she inspires a person to mix metaphors with abandon -- but I digress.

For her part as Bonnie Parker, Dunaway was nominated for an Academy Award in 1967, but lost to Katharine Hepburn (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner). She was again in good company -- Anne Bancroft lost also, despite being Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. In the Heat of the Night took Best Picture, and Rod Steiger won Best Actor. In Cold Blood and The Dirty Dozen also ran that year. Golly, those were the wild Vietnam War days, eh?

Dunaway is, above all, a powerful actor. After her signature role in Bonnie and Clyde, she continued to tear up the screen with memorable performances. Movies that come to mind immediately include Little Big Man (1970) with Dustin Hoffman; The Three (and Four) Musketeers (1973-1974); Chinatown (1973) with Jack Nicholson; Three Days of the Condor (1975) with Robert Redford; Network (1976) with Peter Finch, William Holden, Robert Duvall, et al.; The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) with Tommy Lee Jones and Brad Dourif; and Mommie Dearest (1981) with Diana Scarwid.

Dunway's performances in Network (for which she won an Academy Award) and Mommie Dearest are scarily great -- enough so that she was rarely given a leading role again. She has noted this herself, crediting her replication of Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest as a virtual career killer, at least as the main attraction. But given that she was only forty at the time, she still had plenty of movies in her.

Two of note are Barfly (1987) with Mickey Rourke and Don Juan DeMarco (1995) with Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando.

She continues to act, but I'm not nearly as familiar with her more recent work. Hopefully this is not a reflection of a lowering arc, but merely ignorance on my part.

Faye Dunaway (January 14, 1941-) is Catholic by way of conversion -- something I can relate to -- and unconventionally so. Like Catherine Deneuve, she romanced the always married (to Flora Carabella) Marcello Mastroianni, and eventually she herself took the plunge twice: with Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band (1974-1979) and English photographer Terry O'Neill (1984-1987). In between these marriages, she and O'Neill had a son, Liam (1980-). Love it!

Writing this little homage to Faye Dunaway makes me want to get the DVDs. So little time, so much to do and see . . . . .

Since I often use www.wikipedia.org as a starting point in research, I've begun making additions and corrections on that highly useful and ever-expanding database. My first contribution was a small one: adding On the Beach to Fred Astaire's filmography; since then, I've been correcting typos and minor factual errors when I notice them. To paraphrase Tony Soprano: like any good relationship, it's a give and a take.

Life is grand! Ciao.