See 1970s icon Faye Dunaway now at 83
|Among the few living real legends is Faye Dunaway.
The legendary actress, well-known for portraying strong, resentful, and challenging women, is among the best in movie history.
The eighty-three-year-old is still going strong today.
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Not only is Dunaway well-known for her twisted cry in the campy cult classic Mommie Dearest, “no more wire hangers!”, but she also starred in Hurry Sundown with Michael Caine and Bonnie & Clyde, winning the main role over Jane Fonda and Natalie Wood.
The Florida native actress, who was also awarded three Golden Globes and an Emmy, was born in Bascom.
It’s difficult to discuss Faye Dunaway’s career without bringing up the film Mommies Dearest. Channeling the energy of the legendary actress Joan Crawford, who passed away four years prior, Faye Dunaway astounded the Mommie Dearest crew when she first appeared from the dressing room.
The highly anticipated movie Mommie Dearest (1981) is based on Christina Crawford’s autobiographical novel of the same name, which describes her dysfunctional bond with the late actress Joan Crawford, who was her adopted mother.
Dunaway succeeded in capturing a scary yet endearing essence.
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In her unsettling portrayal of Crawford, Dunaway blurred the boundaries between reality and resurrecting Joan, both on and off the set. She was so desperate that she declared, “I want to climb inside her skin,” to a Hollywood biographer.
Dunaway either developed her method acting skills to a high degree or her spirit took over. In her memoir, “Looking for Gatsby,” she writes. “I was told by one that it felt like Joan herself had risen from the dead.”
Indeed, the press began to report that Crawford was haunting Dunaway. “(Dunaway) appears to have borrowed it for 12 weeks from the ghost of Joan Crawford,” the Los Angeles Times said of her voice.
In a part that will live in legend, Dunaway expresses remorse. She told Entertainment Tonight, “I think it turned my career in a direction where people would irretrievably have the wrong impression of me—and that’s an awful hard thing to beat.” “I should have known better, but vulnerability exists sometimes.”and you have no idea what you’re about to embark onto.
Working with some of the sexiest men in Hollywood, like Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Kirk Douglas, and Johnny Depp, Dunaway showed extreme self-control and maintained a platonic connection with her co-stars.
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A few individuals were drawn to particular things; perhaps Jack (Nicholson) and Warren (Beatty), but not many. Though Steve McQueen was contentedly devoted to someone at the time, Warren was at that point in his bachelorhood. “I wouldn’t mess around with something like that even if it were offered, but it wasn’t,” Warren said.
“You simply don’t,” she remarked in a Harper’s Bazaar interview. “You don’t do that because you know it will ruin the performance and the movie. That’s my rule.”
The dapper, Italian award-winning actor Marcello Mastroianni, broke the rules for the timeless beauty with her delicate high cheekbones because he was too much of a temptation.
Life imitates art in her connection with the Italian celebrity. appearing in the 1968 film A Place for Lovers, which Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times referred to as the “most godawful piece of pseudo-romantic slop I’ve ever seen!”-Dunaway portrays a fashion designer who is having an extramarital romance with Mastroianni, a race car driver. She had a brief but intense three-year romance with the actor in real life, which she ended when he refused to leave his wife.
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Dunaway stated, “I was deeply in love with him,” in a People interview. I had never encountered a man like him before, and I felt incredibly safe with him.
She wed musician Peter Wolf, the lead vocalist of The J. Geils Band, in 1974; they separated after five years.
According to a Marie Claire article from 2017, Dunaway began an affair with renowned British photographer Terry O’Neill because she was dissatisfied in her marriage to Wolf. Her Oscar from the movie The Network was on the table beside her when O’Neill took this picture of her lounging by the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
After being married in 1983, Dunaway misled the public for many years, claiming that her son Liam, who was born in 1980, was actually her biological child. In 1987, Dunaway and O’Neill were divorced.
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Dunaway has been charged as being a diva who panders to her co-stars and is very unpredictable and difficult to work with on set and even at hotels.
She was fired from her role as Audrey Hepburn in the off-Broadway production of Tea at Five in 2019 for creating a “dangerous” and “hostile” environment, and she was fired by Andrew Lloyd Weber from his Sunset Boulevard production in Los Angeles, California, in 1994.
She was dubbed the “gossamer grenade” by one of her leading men, Jack Nicholson. In 1988, Johnny Carson posed the question, “Who’s one of the worst people you know in Hollywood?” “Faye Dunaway and everybody you can put in this chair would tell you exactly the same thing,” was the swift response from the feisty and unrepentant Bette Davis. She went on, “I don’t think that She’s just being uncooperative, but we have the time to discuss all the reasons. For Miss Dunaway, Miss Dunaway is Miss.
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Dunaway is still a very talented performer despite her challenging, frequently harsh, and nasty demeanor.
She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1996, and in 1997, People magazine listed her as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People.
Regarding her romantic status, she is now single.
She stated in a 2016 People interview that she was still open to dating. She says, “I’m very much a loner.” “I always think that if I could find the right person, I would like to have a partner in life, and I would.”
Her most recent credit dates back to 2022, when she costarred in the Italian film L’uomo che disegnò Dio with Kevin Spacey.
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