Sissy Spacek

Sissy Spacek (born December 25, 1949, Quitman, Texas, U.S.) American actress who was known for her ability to convey genuineness in a range of critically admired roles.

Spacek grew up in rural Texas, and, following high school, she moved to New York City in 1967 to pursue a career as a singer. While there she stayed with a cousin, actor Rip Torn, and his wife, actress Geraldine Page. After recording a novelty single under the name Rainbo, Spacek enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute (now the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute) to study acting. Her first credited movie role was in the thriller Prime Cut (1972), with Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman.

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After guest roles in such TV shows as Love, American Style and The Waltons, Spacek was cast in a leading role in Terrence Malick’s first feature film, Badlands (1973); her narration and her performance as a bored teenage girl joining her boyfriend in a murder spree won critical praise. In 1974 Spacek appeared in the TV movie The Migrants (written by Lanford Wilson from a Tennessee Williams short story) and played the title role in the minor film comedy Ginger in the Morning. Spacek’s breakthrough came when she played the taunted teen misfit title character in Brian De Palma’s horror classic Carrie (1976), based on a Stephen King novel. She earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance. She then costarred with Shelley Duvall and Janice Rule in Robert Altman’s enigmatic 3 Women (1977).

Spacek’s complex performance as country music star Loretta Lynn in the biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), in which she portrayed Lynn from the age of about 13 to near middle age and did her own singing, earned her an Academy Award for best actress as well as a Golden Globe Award. Spacek also played Beat muse Carolyn Cassady in the less successful Heart Beat (1980). She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her lead role in Raggedy Man (1981), directed by her husband, Jack Fisk, and she won nominations for a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar for her performance in Costa-Gavras’s Missing (1982). Her portrayal of a struggling farm wife in The River (1984) earned her additional Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. Spacek starred in Marie (1985), a true-life political drama, and in Fisk’s romance Violets Are Blue… (1986), as well as the play adaptation ’Night, Mother (1986). She was nominated for a fifth Oscar and won a Golden Globe Award for her role in Beth Henley’s adaptation of her own play Crimes of the Heart (1986). Spacek’s later movies included The Long Walk Home (1990), Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991), Paul Schrader’s Affliction (1997), and David Lynch’s The Straight Story (1999).

Spacek earned a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for both a BAFTA Award and an Oscar for her role as the mother of a murdered son in In the Bedroom (2001). She later appeared in the fantasy Tuck Everlasting (2002), the horror film The Ring Two (2005), and the drama North Country (2005). She received a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of an eccentric artist in the television movie Pictures of Hollis Woods (2007). Spacek appeared in a few minor film comedies thereafter. In 2010 she performed in several episodes of the TV series Big Love (2006–11). She had a small part in the blockbuster movie The Help (2011), and she portrayed the family matriarch in the TV series Bloodline (2015–17). Spacek’s next TV role was a mother with dementia in the first season (2018) of Castle Rock, a series based on the work of Stephen King. She then returned to film in The Old Man & the Gun (2018), playing the love interest of Robert Redford’s charming bank robber. Spacek later starred with J.K. Simmons in the TV series Night Sky (2022– ), about a couple who discover a portal to another planet.