Oscar-winning American actress Louise Fletcher for her role as a chilling nurse in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” died Friday in France at the age of 88, US media reported.
Louise Fletcher, who had two sons, died at her home in Montdaurus, southern France, according to Variety and Deadline, citing sources in her entourage.
She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the multi-award winning Milos Forman (1975), based on a Ken Kesey novel and placed in a psychiatric hospital, in a competition that year against Frenchwoman Isabelle Adjani in “The Story of Adele.” h.
In this film that also won a Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for Best Actress, Louise Fletcher played Mildred Ratched, “Nurse Ratched,” the head nurse. She confronts Randall B. McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, who is pretending to be crazy and is committed to escaping from prison.
The film, almost documentary in its depiction of brutal hospital tactics, chronicles the patient’s rude fake attempt to rebel, a role that also won Jack Nicholson an Academy Award.
With her starchy white blouse, bouffant bouffant hairstyle, cool blue look and soft voice, Louise Fletcher embodies all the ruthlessness of the psychiatric establishment.
In 2003, the American Film Institute’s rating made the nurse one of the ugliest “bad guy” or “villain” roles in cinema, surpassed only by Hannibal Lecter (“The Silence of the Lambs”), Norman Bates (“Psychosis”), and Darth Vader (“Darth Vader”). “Star Wars”) and the Wicked Witch of the West (“The Wizard of Oz”).
“You hated me so much that you’re rewarding me for it,” she joked, kissing her figurine.
However, it was not for this joke that his small acceptance speech went down in the history of the Oscars, lavishing with tears and outbursts of all kinds.
By doubling these notes in sign language, Louise Fletcher, her parents’ deaf daughter, thanked her, and said in a stifled voice, “Thank you for teaching me to dream.”
In an interview with Vanity Fair in 2018, the actress tells how when she accompanied her mother to the cinema, she explained the plot to her in this language.
In the same interview, she explained that after convincing Milos Forman who wanted her so badly, she wanted to offer a more complex explanation for “Nurse Ratched.”
Louise Fletcher saw in her a nurse who was even more wonderful because she was convinced that her profession was noble and that her actions were just. I also imagined a woman who is deeply attracted to the character played by Jack Nicholson.
“She takes care of the sick and they have to pretend they are happy to take the medicine or listen to this music (which is being played to them). So that she herself can feel happy being her,” deciphered Louise Fletcher.
At the time of filming in the film she was a semi-unidentified actress, married to a producer, and for several years had deserted to look after her children.
Without finding a role of the same scale, she later played in films such as “The Player” by Robert Altman or “The Exorcist 2”, and was shot in series such as “The Incorruptibles” or “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”.
Louise Fletcher starred in two episodes of Netflix’s “Girlboss” back in 2017, according to IMDb.com.
