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Quick Facts
- NAME: Sissy Spacek
- OCCUPATION: Film Actress, Television Actress
- BIRTH DATE: December 25, 1949 (Age: 63)
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Quitman, Texas
- Originally: Mary Elizabeth Spacek
- ZODIAC SIGN: Capricorn
Best Known For
Sissy Spacek is an American actress who is best known for her title role in the horror film Carrie and as Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter.
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Play NowSissy Spacek. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 12:13, May 20, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/sissy-spacek-9542445.
Sissy Spacek. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/sissy-spacek-9542445 [Accessed 20 May 2013].
"Sissy Spacek." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 20 2013, 12:13 http://www.biography.com/people/sissy-spacek-9542445.
"Sissy Spacek," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/sissy-spacek-9542445 [accessed May 20, 2013].
"Sissy Spacek," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/sissy-spacek-9542445 (accessed May 20, 2013).
Sissy Spacek [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 20] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/sissy-spacek-9542445.
Sissy Spacek, http://www.biography.com/people/sissy-spacek-9542445 (last visited May 20, 2013).
Sissy Spacek. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/sissy-spacek-9542445. Accessed May 20, 2013.
With her next two notable projects, the political drama Missing (1982), costarring Jack Lemmon, and The River (1984), costarring Mel Gibson, Spacek scored two more Oscar nods as Best Actress. In 1986, she portrayed a suicidal woman in 'night Mother, costarring Anne Bancroft, and received her fifth Best Actress nomination,
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for her performance as the most eccentric of three sisters in Crimes of the Heart, costarring Jessica Lange.
Both Spacek and Fisk then took a lengthy break from filmmaking, retreating to their Virginia farm, Beau Val, to spend time with their two daughters, Schuyler (now an actress who appeared in the 2002 comedy Orange County) and Madison. She began to take acting jobs only intermittently after that, returning to the screen in the civil rights drama The Long Walk Home, costarring Whoopi Goldberg, in 1990. The following year, she played the wife of Kevin Costner’s Jim Garrison in the controversial Oliver Stone film JFK. A number of highbrow television projects followed, including the HBO features A Private Matter (1994) and If These Walls Could Talk (1996) and the TNT movie The Good Old Boys (1995), costarring and directed by her Coal Miner's Daughter costar Tommy Lee Jones, earning her first Emmy nomination for the last role. She reteamed with another former costar, Carrie's Piper Laurie, in the 1995 film version of Truman Capote's The Grass Harp.
In 1997, Spacek turned in a strong supporting performance in the dark drama Affliction, costarring Nick Nolte. In a rare comedic performance, she played the matriarch of a family who spends 30 years living below ground in a bomb shelter in the little-seen Blast From the Past (1999). That same year, she appeared in David Lynch’s The Straight Story, playing a woman whose father (Richard Farnsworth) travels a great distance on a lawnmower to visit his estranged brother.
In 2001, Spacek garnered some of the best reviews of her career, numerous critical accolades (including a Golden Globe Award), and her sixth career Oscar nomination for Best Actress for the independent feature In the Bedroom, costarring Tom Wilkinson. Playing a Maine couple whose teenage son is killed by the estranged husband of his older girlfriend (played by Marisa Tomei), Spacek and Wilkinson turned in two of the most talked-about performances of the year, and the film earned five total Oscar nods, including Best Picture.
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