Faye Dunaway

Faye Dunaway
Dunaway at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival
Born	Dorothy Faye Dunaway January 14, 1941 (1941-01-14) (age 68) Bascom, Florida, United States
Years active	1965 – present
Spouse(s)	Peter Wolf (1974–1979) Terry O'Neill (1983–1987)
Awards won Academy Awards Best Actress 1976 Network BAFTA Awards Best Newcomer 1967 Bonnie and Clyde ; Hurry Sundown Emmy Awards Outstanding Guest Actress – Drama Series 1994 Columbo Golden Globe Awards Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama 1977 Network Best Supporting Actress – Miniseries 1985 Ellis Island 1999 Gia

Dorothy Faye Dunaway (born January 14, 1941), known as Faye Dunaway, is an American actress. She has starred in a variety of films, from blockbusters such as The Towering Inferno and the camp classic Mommie Dearest, to the most critically acclaimed including Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, and Network. She received Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her performances in Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown, before winning the category with her 1976 performance in Network.

Biography

Early life

Dunaway was born in Bascom, Florida, the daughter of Grace April (née Smith), a homemaker, and John MacDowell Dunaway, Jr., a career army officer.^[1] She attended the University of Florida,^[2] Florida State University,^[3] and Boston University, but graduated from the University of Florida in theater. In 1962, Dunaway joined the American National Theater and Academy.

Career

Dunaway appeared on Broadway in 1962 as the daughter of Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons. Her first screen role was in 1967 in The Happening. In 1967 she was in Hurry Sundown, but that same year, she got the leading female role in Bonnie and Clyde (opposite Warren Beatty), which earned her an Oscar nomination. She also starred in 1968 with Steve McQueen in the caper film The Thomas Crown Affair (and had a small role in the 1999 remake with Pierce Brosnan).

Dunaway being interviewed by Army Archerd on the red carpet at the 60th Annual Academy Awards, April 11, 1988.

It was in the 1970s that she began to stretch her acting muscles in such films as Three Days of the Condor, Little Big Man, Chinatown, The Three/Four Musketeers, Eyes of Laura Mars, and Network, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress as the scheming TV executive Diana Christensen.

In the 1980s, although her performances did not waver, the parts grew less compelling. Dunaway would later blame Mommie Dearest (1981) for ruining her career as a leading lady. Critics panned the movie, and audiences did not like it either, but in later years it would become a cult classic. "I was too good at Crawford," she was often quoted as saying. It can also be said that the dawn of Meryl Streep's reign as queen of dramatic cinema played a role in Dunaway's decline. She played an alcoholic in Barfly (opposite Mickey Rourke). In a later movie, Don Juan DeMarco (1995), Dunaway co-starred with Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando.

Dunaway won an Emmy for a 1994 role as a murderer in "It's All in the Game," an episode of the long-running mystery series Columbo.

She is a three-time Oscar nominee for Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, and Network, winning for the latter. She has won three Golden Globes, including for the television films Ellis Island (1984) and Gia (1998), and has been nominated for a Golden Globe ten times.

In 1996, she toured nationally with the stage play "Master Class". The story about opera singer Maria Callas was very powerful and well received. Dunaway bought the rights to the Terrence McNally play, for possible film development.

In 2006, Dunaway played a character named Lois O'Neill in the sixth season of the popular crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. She served as a judge on the 2005 reality show The Starlet, which sought, American Idol-style, to find the next young actress with the potential to become a major star. In the spring of 2007, the direct-to-DVD movie release of Rain, based on the novel by V. C. Andrews and starring Dunaway, was released.

Dunaway has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard, which was awarded on October 2, 1996.

Personal life

Romantically linked to a series of men ranging from the comedian Lenny Bruce to actor Marcello Mastroianni, Dunaway has been married twice. Her first husband, from 1974 until 1979, was Peter Wolf, the lead singer of the rock group the J. Geils Band. Her second, from 1984 until 1987, was Terry O'Neill, a British photographer; they had one child, Liam O'Neill (born 1980). In 2003, however, O'Neill revealed that his son with Dunaway was adopted, not biological, though the actress had long maintained the opposite.

Dunaway is a Roman Catholic.^[4]

Filmography

Guest appearances

• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation "Kiss-Kiss, Bye-Bye" January 26, 2006
• Alias "The Abduction" (2002); "A Higher Echelon" (2003); "The Getaway" (2003), as Ariana Kane
• Columbo: It's All in the Game (1993), as Lauren Staton

References

External links

• Faye Dunaway at the Internet Movie Database
• Faye Dunaway at Yahoo! Movies

Guardian interview - www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/07/celebrity