Faye Dunaway is one of the few remaining real legends.
The classic actress, known for playing harsh, spiteful, and demanding characters, ranks among the best performances in film history.
The 83-year-old is still doing it today…
Dunaway is best known for her twisted cry, “No more wire hangers!” in the campy cult film Mommie Dearest. She also starred in Hurry Sundown with Michael Caine and Bonnie and Clyde, where she beat off Jane Fonda and Natalie Wood for the lead part.
The actress, who was born in Bascom, Florida, has won three Golden Globes and one Emmy.
It’s difficult to discuss Faye Dunaway’s career without mentioning the film Mommies Dearest. Faye Dunaway surprised the crew on the set of Mommie Dearest when she first appeared from the dressing room as Joan Crawford, the renowned actress who passed away four years earlier.
Mommie Dearest (1981) is a sensationalized cinematic adaptation of Christina Crawford’s memoir of the same name, which details her troubled relationship with her adoptive mother, famed actress Joan Crawford.
Dunaway caught something both horrifying and delightful.
Dunaway’s frightening portrayal of Crawford blurred the limits of reality, bringing Joan back to life both on and off set. So much so that she stated to a Hollywood biographer, “I want to climb inside her skin.”
Either Dunaway refined her technique as a method actor, or she was seized by her spirit. She recounts in her memoirs, Looking for Gatsby. “One told me it was like seeing Joan herself come back from the 𝕕𝕖𝕒𝕕.”
In fact, the media began reporting that Dunaway was tormented by Crawford. The Los Angeles Times noted of her voice, “(Dunaway) appears to have borrowed it for 12 weeks from the ghost of Joan Crawford.”
In one of her most renowned portrayals, Dunaway expresses regrets. “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,” she told the television show Entertainment Tonight. “I should have known better, but sometimes you’re vulnerable and you don’t realize what you’re getting into.”
Working among Hollywood’s hottest men, including Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Kirk Douglas, and Johnny Depp, Dunaway displayed extreme discipline and maintained platonic ties with her co-stars.
“A few people, perhaps Jack (Nicholson) and Warren (Beatty), found certain things appealing. Warren was in full bachelorhood at the time, but Steve (McQueen) was blissfully devoted to someone, and I wouldn’t mess around with something like that even if it were offered, which it wasn’t.
“You just don’t,” she explained in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar. “I have a rule: You know it’s going to ruin the performance and ruin the movie, so you don’t do that.”
The classic beauty with delicate high cheekbones defied the rule for the suave Marcello Mastroianni, an Italian award-winning actor who proved too tempting.
Her friendship with the Italian superstar exemplifies how life imitates art. Starring in A Place for Lovers (1968), described by Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times as the “most godawful piece of pseudo-romantic slop I’ve ever seen!”- Dunaway plays a fashion designer who has a romance with Mastroianni, a racecar driver. In real life, she had a three-year affair with the actor, which she ended when he refused to leave his wife.
Dunaway told People, “I was deeply in love with him.” He was a man like no other I’d ever encountered, and he made me feel quite safe.”
She married musician Peter Wolf, lead vocalist of The J. Geils Band, in 1974, and divorced him five years later.
According to a Marie Claire report from 2017, Dunaway was dissatisfied in her marriage to Wolf and began an affair with renowned British photographer Terry O’Neill. O’Neill captured a photo of her seated by the pool at The Beverly Hills Hotel, with her Oscar from the film The Network on the table beside her.
The couple married in 1983 and had a son, Liam (born in 1980), whom Dunaway mislead the public for many years by claiming he was her biological child. Dunaway and O’Neill got divorced in 1987.
Dunaway has been accused of being a fawning diva who is extremely difficult and unpredictable to co-stars, production personnel, and even hotel staff.
In 2019, she was sacked from her role as Audrey Hepburn in the off-Broadway production of Tea at Five for creating a “hostile” and “dangerous” environment, and in 1994, she was dumped by Andrew Lloyd Weber in his Sunset Boulevard production in Los Angeles, California.
One of her leading men, Jack Nicholson, dubbed her the “gossamer grenade,” and in 1988, Johnny Carson questioned, “Who’s one of the worst people you know in Hollywood?” The feisty and defiant Bette Davis soon responded, “Faye Dunaway and everybody you can put in this chair would tell you exactly the same thing.” She went on, “I don’t think we have time to go over all the reasons–she’s just uncooperative.” Miss Dunaway is dedicated to Miss Dunaway.
Despite her harsh, rude, and aggressive conduct, Dunaway remains a talented actor.
People magazine named her one of the 50 most beautiful people in 1997, and she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1996.
As for her relationship status, today, she is single.
In an interview with People in 2016, she said she was still open to dating. “I’m very much a loner,” she admits. “I always think I would like to have a partner in life, and I would–if I could find the right person, I think.”
Her latest credit is from 2022 when she starred alongside Kevin Spacey in the Italian movie L’uomo che disegnò Dio.
