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Sissy Spacek

Sissy SpacekAKA Mary Elizabeth Spacek

Born: 25-Dec-1949
Birthplace: Quitman, TX

Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Coal Miner's Daughter

After graduating from high school, Spacek came to New York for an extended stay with her cousin, actor Rip Torn, and his wife, Geraldine Page. She briefly sang and played guitar at West Village bar called The Bitter End, under the painfully '60s-esque stage name "Rainbo". She wanted to act, so Torn pulled strings to get her into Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio. Later, when agents suggested she should change her unusual name, it was Torn who talked her out of it. Spacek made her movie debut in 1970 as "girl at bar" in Andy Warhol's Trash. She appeared in two episodes of The Waltons, was sold into sex slavery in 1972's Prime Cut, and played a girl 'in trouble' in a 1973 TV movie about a home for unwed mothers, The Girls of Huntington House. Playing a thinly fictionalized version of serial killer Caril Fugate, Spacek garnered good reviews in Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973), opposite Martin Sheen as Charles Starkweather. She soon married Badlands art director Jack Fisk.

Several months later, when Fisk was working on Phanton of the Paradise, one of his crew walked out on the first day of shooting, and Spacek volunteered to serve as a set dresser. Phantom's director, Brian De Palma, remembered Spacek two years later, when Fisk suggested that she would be perfect for the title role in the indelible Carrie. Spacek received an Oscar nomination, and Carrie is still one of De Palma's best films, and arguably the best adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Spacek won her Oscar playing Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980). She has also been nominated for Missing (1982), The River (1984), Crimes of the Heart (1986), and In the Bedroom (2001). Also among her best films: Three Women, 'Night, Mother, The Long Walk Home, and Crimes of the Heart.

Fisk, Spacek's husband, appeared on camera as the man in the planet, yanking the lever to start the nightmare, in David Lynch's Eraserhead.

Father: Edwin A. Spacek
Mother: Virginia Spilman
Brother: Robbie (d. leukemia)
Husband: Jack Fisk (art director, m. 1974, two daughters)
Daughter: Schuyler Fisk (actress, b. 1982)
Daughter: Virginia Madison Fisk (actress, b. 1988)

    High School: Quitman High School, Quitman, TX (1967)

    4-H Club
    Oscar for Best Actress 1981 for Coal Miner's Daughter
    Golden Globe 1981 for Coal Miner's Daughter
    Golden Globe 1987 for Crimes of the Heart
    Golden Globe 2002 for In the Bedroom

    TELEVISION
    Bloodline Sally Rayburn (2015-)
    Big Love Marilyn Densham (2010)

    FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
    The Old Man & the Gun (31-Aug-2018)
    Birth of the Living Dead (18-Oct-2013) · Herself
    Deadfall (22-Apr-2012)
    The Help (10-Aug-2011) · Missus Walters
    Get Low (12-Sep-2009) · Mattie Darrow
    Four Christmases (26-Nov-2008) · Paula
    Lake City (25-Apr-2008) · Maggie
    Pictures of Hollis Woods (2-Dec-2007)
    Hot Rod (3-Aug-2007) · Marie Powell
    Gray Matters (21-Oct-2006)
    An American Haunting (5-Nov-2005) · Lucy Bell
    North Country (12-Sep-2005) · Alice Aimes
    The Ring Two (17-Mar-2005) · Evelyn
    Nine Lives (24-Jan-2005) · Ruth
    A Home at the End of the World (9-Jun-2004) · Alice Glover
    A Decade Under the Influence (19-Jan-2003) · Herself
    Tuck Everlasting (8-Sep-2002) · Mae Tuck
    Last Call (25-May-2002) · Zelda Fitzgerald
    Midwives (2-Apr-2001)
    In the Bedroom (19-Jan-2001)
    The Straight Story (21-May-1999)
    Blast from the Past (27-Jan-1999)
    Affliction (28-Aug-1997) · Margie Fogg
    If These Walls Could Talk (11-Sep-1996)
    Beyond the Call (23-Jun-1996) · Pam O'Brien
    Streets of Laredo (12-Nov-1995)
    The Grass Harp (10-Sep-1995)
    The Good Old Boys (5-Mar-1995)
    Trading Mom (13-May-1994)
    A Place for Annie (1-May-1994)
    A Private Matter (20-Jun-1992)
    JFK (20-Dec-1991) · Liz Garrison
    Hard Promises (14-Sep-1991) · Chris
    The Long Walk Home (11-Sep-1990) · Miriam Thompson
    Crimes of the Heart (12-Dec-1986) · Babe Magrath
    'Night Mother (5-Sep-1986)
    Violets Are Blue (11-Apr-1986)
    Marie (Oct-1985)
    The River (19-Dec-1984) · Mae Garvey
    Missing (12-Feb-1982) · Beth Horman
    Raggedy Man (18-Sep-1981) · Nita
    Heart Beat (25-Apr-1980)
    Coal Miner's Daughter (22-Feb-1980) · Loretta Webb
    Verna: USO Girl (25-Jan-1978)
    3 Women (11-Nov-1977) · Pinky Rose
    Welcome to L.A. (12-Nov-1976)
    Carrie (3-Nov-1976) · Carrie
    Katherine (5-Oct-1975)
    Ginger in the Morning (Jul-1974)
    The Migrants (3-Feb-1974)
    Badlands (15-Oct-1973) · Holly
    Prime Cut (28-Jun-1972)


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