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Background:
An Academy Award-winning American actress, Faye Dunaway was one of the hottest
actresses in the 1970s playing neurotic, highly driven women with sex
attraction. First earning recognition as a stage performer, this exotically
stunning, gifted and somewhat stormy performer was shot to stardom as the
distaff half of the bank robbing pair in the Arthur Penn screen classic Bonnie
and Clyde (1967), from which she was nominated for an Oscar, and won a BAFTA
Award and a Golden Laurel Award. She solidified her status as one of the most
influential leading ladies by picking up her next Oscar nomination for her work
on the Roman Polanski-directed Chinatown (1974, as Evelyn Cross Mulwray).
However, it was not until 1975 that Dunaway reached the zenith of her fame, when
she was cast as ruthless TV executive Diana on Sidney Lumet’s Network.
Delivering a spectacular performance, she won such honors as a Golden Globe
Award, a BAFTA Award, a Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award, a David di
Donatello Award, and finally an Oscar. Other memorable performances include Lou
McDowell in Hurry Sundown (1967, netted a BAFTA Award), Vicki Anderson in The
Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Lady de Winter in The Three Musketeers (1973), Laura
Mars in Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), Wanda in Barfly (1987), Marilyn Mickler in
Don Juan DeMarco (1995), Lee Cayhall Bowen in The Chamber (1996) and Yolande
D’Aragon in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999). Her more recent and
upcoming projects include The Rules of Attraction (2002), Ghosts Never Sleep
(2005), Rain (2006), Love Hollywood Style (2006), Dr. Fugazzi (2007), Say It in
Russian (2007) and American Cowslip (2007).
The actress has also found some triumph on the small screen. She collected two
Golden Globe Awards for her performances in the 1984 miniseries “Ellis Island,”
as Maud Charteris, and the 1998 television film Gia, as Wilhelmina Cooper. In
1994, the versatile player won an Emmy Award after playing Peter Falk’s
hurly-burly partner in the TV-film Columbo: It’s All in the Game (1993). In
2005, Dunaway appeared as a judge on several episodes of the reality show “The
Starlet.”
Off camera, Dunaway is a convert to Roman Catholicism and was a member of Pi
Beta Phi fraternity for women. She was married to Peter Wolf from 1974 to 1979
and then to Terry O’Neill from 1983 to 1987. She has a 27-year-old son, Liam
O’Neill. The twice divorced actress’ love life has also been linked to several
celebrities, like the comedian Lenny Bruce, director Jerry Schatzberger
(together from 1966 to 1968), actor Marcello Mastroianni (dated between 1968 and
1970) and Los Angeles-born performer Harris Yulin (together from 1970 to 1972).
Miss Faye
Childhood and Family:
Dorothy Faye Dunaway (dropped her first name when she began acting) was born
prematurely on January 14, 1941, in Bascom, Florida, to John MacDowell Dunaway,
an army officer, and Grace April Smith, a homemaker. Her parents separated when
Faye was seventeen years old, and her mother was later married to Jim Hartshorn.
She has a younger brother named Mac.
Initially planning to become an educator, Miss Faye decided to become an actress
and transformed from University of Florida to Boston University, studying
theater art and graduating in 1962. She turned down a Fulbright scholarship to
attend the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) for a role in a
Broadway play with the American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA).
Faye tied the knot with Peter Wolf, the lead vocalist of the rock group the J.
Geils Band, on August 7, 1974, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1979. Next,
she married Terry O’Neill, a famous British photographer, in 1983, but they
divorced four years later, in 1987. Faye and O’Neill have a son named Liam
Walker Dunaway O’Neill (born 1980). In 2003, however, O’Neill disclosed that his
son with Faye was adopted, not biological, although the actress had long
retained the opposite.
Chinatown
Career:
After college, Faye Dunaway launched her professional career with the American
National Theatre and Academy, making her Broadway debut in the 1962 production
of “A Man for All Seasons.” For two years, she continued to perform onstage in a
number of ANTA productions, including Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall” (1964),
before scoring a breakthrough performance as the damned Kathleen Stanton in an
off-Broadway production of William Alfred’s “Hogan’s Goat” (1965) at the
American Place, which led to a six-year contract with movie director Otto
Preminger. In 1967, Dunaway kicked off her film career with Preminger’s dull
melodrama Hurry Sundown, playing a poor Southerner married to a farmer (John
Philip Law), a role that won Dunaway a 1988 BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer to
Leading Film Roles. The two, however, often conflicted, and she declined to
appear in his Skidoo. Following a legal clash, the actress was permitted to buy
out the remainder of her contract, and she next acted in The Happening (1967).
Despite these discouraging beginnings, Dunaway reached prominence later that
same year when she was cast opposite Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn’s crime saga
Bonnie and Clyde. The film was a huge success, becoming one of the most powerful
films of the era, and she became an instant star. For her outstanding portrayal
of the notorious criminal Bonnie Parker, she won a BAFTA for Most Promising
Newcomer to Leading Film Roles and a Golden Laurel for Female Dramatic
Performance, as well as received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. With
the success, Dunaway was launched to the front ranks of leading ladies.
Dunaway cemented her calmly elegant screen persona with her role as an insurance
investigator romantically involved with a millionaire thief (Steve McQueen) in
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and earned some of the movie’s best notices for
playing Kirk Douglas’ mistress in The Arrangement (1969), a drama directed and
penned by Elia Kazan. She offered an influential starring turn as a high-strung
fashion model in Jerry Schatzberg’s directorial debut Puzzle of a Downfall Child
(1970). Early 1970s also saw the actress start to showcase her versatility in
comic turns, such as playing nymphomaniacal priest’s wife in Arthur Penn’s hit
Little Big Man (1970) and as Milady de Winter in Richard Lester’s remake of The
Three Musketeers (1973) and its continuation The Four Musketeers (1974), and in
highly dramatic roles, like as frontierswoman in the revisionist Western ‘Doc’
(1971). Meanwhile, Dunaway found herself appearing in several TV projects,
including the TV version of Hogan’s Goat (1971, reprised her stage role of
Kathleen Stanton) and the NBC adaptation of Arthur Miller’s After the Fall
(1974, delivered a burning turn as Maggie), and in such stage productions as
Harold Pinter’s “Old Times” (1971) and “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1972).
An acclaimed performer, Dunaway proved that she was back on the saddle again
with her memorable performance in Roman Polanski’s noir drama Chinatown (1974),
starring as the multifarious, untruthful Evelyn Mulwray, opposite Jack
Nicholson. For her brilliant effort, she was handed her next Oscar nomination,
and received two other nods, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture
Actress – Drama and a BAFTA Film for Best Actress. She further confirmed that
her star power had returned in full with the success of The Towering Inferno
(1974). After a performance along side Robert Redford in the well-received
thriller Three Days of the Condor (1975), Dunaway gained even more appreciation
and popularity when Sidney Lumet had her play the starring role of an ambitious
TV executive, Diana Christensen, in the 1976 scornful black comedy Network. On
her third attempt, the actress eventually took home an Academy Award for her
role in the movie. She also picked up a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture
Actress-Drama, a Kansas City Film Critics Circle for Best Actress and a David di
Donatello for Best Foreign Actress, as well as a Best Actress BAFTA Film
nomination. This was quickly followed by roles in the British film Voyage of the
Damned (1976), the NBC TV-film The Disappearance of Aimee (1976), and in 1978
she became known as the star of the much-maligned thriller The Eyes of Laura
Mars.
After wasted performances in the ill-advised remake of The Camp (1979) and The
First Deadly Sin (1980, opposite Frank Sinatra), Dunaway could be seen in Joan
Crawford’s camp classic Mommie Dearest (1981), which found limited success as a
midnight movie, and Evita Peron (1981, TV). Her career was again drooping, a
doom which neither the 1982 telefilm The Country Girl nor the 1982 Broadway
production of “The Curse of an Aching Heart”, helped to remedy. Following the
sci-fi film Supergirl (1984), the actress spent much of the decade on the small
screen. In 1985, she nabbed a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in
a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV for her
work on the miniseries “Ellis Island” (1984). Her other TV credits include the
CBS miniseries “Christopher Columbus” (1985), Beverly Hills Madam (1986) and the
well-received TNT film Cold Sassy Tree (1989, also served as producer).
Dunaway won acclaim for her performance opposite Mickey Rourke in the
independent film Barfly (1987), in which she portrayed a drunk named Wanda
Wilcox. Unfortunately, her subsequent projects went overlooked, including the
1990 Chinatown installment The Two Jakes. In 1993, she took on the starring role
of Laura Scofield on the short-lived sitcom “It Had to Be You,” with Robert
Urich, and was notable as Lauren Staton, a sparring partner for Peter Falk’s
Columbo, in the TV-film Columbo: It’s All in the Game (1993), a role that
brought her a 1994 Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series. Despite
the TV success, in 1994, Dunaway found disappointment on stage when Andrew Lloyd
Webber closed the musicalization of “Sunset Boulevard” just before performances
were to begin in L.A, citing the actress could not meet the vocal demands of the
show, which resulted in a lawsuit. Two years later, Dunaway rebounded as Maria
Callas on the national tour of Terrence McNally’s Tony-winning “Master Class.”
A star of the 1970s films, Dunaway tried to revitalize her fading screen career
by undertaking supporting roles in Don Juan DeMarco (1995, with Marlon Brando),
Kevin Spacey’s directorial debut Albino Alligator (1996, with Matt Dillon) and
the film adaptation of author John Grisham’s The Chamber (1996, as Gene
Hackman’s alcoholic daughter). In 1999, she offered a nod to her screen past
with a cameo role in the remake of her 1968 film, The Thomas Crown Affair,
starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, and later that year she assumed the more
sizeable role of Yolanda of Aragon on director Luc Besson’s Joan of Arc epic The
Messenger. Still in 1999, Dunaway enjoyed small screen success by netting a
Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a
Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture for her performance as Wilhelmina Cooper
in the television film Gia (1998).
As the new millennium rolled in, Dunaway was introduced to a new generation of
moviegoers by playing the mother of Ian Somerhalder on director/writer Roger
Avary’s jumpy film adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis’ The Rules of Attraction
(2002), which starred TV-teen-affable faces like James Van Der Beek and Jessica
Biel. She went on to appear in underwhelming movies such as The Calling (2002),
Last Goodbye (2004) and Ghosts Never Sleep (2005). She maintained her presence
on the small screen with a number of projects under her belts, including
recurring roles in “Touched by an Angel” (2001) and “Alias” (2002-2003).
However, she is maybe best remembered as a judge in The WB reality “The Starlet”
(2005). In 2006, Dunaway made five movies, including the Brooklyn Sudan vehicle
Rain, the comedy Cougar Club and Michael Stein’s Love Hollywood Style, and made
a guest performance in an episode of the popular show “CSI: Crime Scene
Investigation.”
The 66-year-old performer is scheduled to costar in the thriller feature Dr.
Fugazzi (2007), playing Detective Rowland. Additionally, she will be cast as
Jacqueline de Rossy on the drama/romance Say It in Russian (2007), starring
Steven Brand and Agata Gotova, and Roe on Mark David’s American Cowslip (2007).
On the small screen, Dunaway will team up with Tiffani Thiessen, Vincent Spano
and Eric Roberts for the miniseries “Pandemic” (2007), as Govenor Shaefer.
Awards:
