American actress Louise Fletcher, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of a nurse in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” died on Friday in France at the age of 88, US media reported.
Louis Fletcher, who had two sons, died at his home in Montourasse in the south of France, according to Variety and Deadline, citing sources in his entourage.
She won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in Milos Forman’s multi-award-winning film (1975), inspired by Ken Casey’s novel and set in a mental hospital, that year against French Isabel Adjani in “The Story of Adele.” H.”
The film, which also won a Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for Best Actress, stars Louise Fletcher as Mildred Ratched, “Nurse Ratched”, the head nurse. Randall B. played by Jack Nicholson. He confronts McMurphy, who is determined to feign insanity and escape prison.
The quasi-documentary portrays the hospital’s brutal methods and chronicles the rebellion of a notorious fake patient, a role that won Jack Nicholson an Oscar.
With her starched white blouse, her irremovably puffy hairstyle, her cold blue gaze and her soft voice, Louise Fletcher embodies all the atrocities of the psychiatric institution.
In 2003, a ranking by the American Film Institute made the nurse one of the most brutal “bad” or “villain” roles in cinema, following Hannibal Lecter (“The Silence of the Lambs”), Norman Bates (“Psychosis”), Darth Vader (“Star Wars”) and The Wicked Witch of the West (“The Wizard of Oz”).
“You hated me so much you’re rewarding me for it,” she joked as she accepted her statue.
However, not for this joke, his short acceptance speech went down in the history of the Oscar ceremony, lavished with tears and all kinds of explosions.
Louise Fletcher, the daughter of deaf parents, doubled down on these comments in sign language, saying in a choked voice: “Thank you for teaching me to have dreams”.
In a 2018 interview with Vanity Fair, the actress recounted how she explained the plot in this language when she went to the cinema with her mother.
In the same interview, she explained that she wanted to give a more complicated interpretation of “Nurse Ratched” to convince Milos Forman, who liked her so much.
Louise Fletcher saw in her a nurse who was so strong because she firmly believed that her profession was noble and her actions just. He also imagined a woman strongly attracted to the character played by Jack Nicholson.
“She takes care of patients and pretends they’re happy to take medicine or listen to this music (played for them). So she’s happy to be herself,” explained Louise Fletcher.
She was an almost unknown actress during the filming of the film, married a producer and left the set to take care of her children for several years.
Not finding a role of the same scale, he starred in Robert Altman’s films such as “The Player” or “The Exorcist 2”, and in series such as “The Incorruptibles” or “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”.
According to IMDb.com, Louise Fletcher starred in two episodes of Netflix’s “Girlboss” back in 2017.
