Faye Dunaway’s Life and Career in Photos

After appearing in plays like After The Fall by Arthur Miller, Dunaway’s career was catalyzed after she appeared as Kathleen in William Alfred’s award-winning off-Broadway play Hogan’s Goat. A lifelong friend and apprentice of Alfred’s, Dunaway described the playwright in her 1995 autobiography Looking For Gatsby: My Life as “A teacher, a mentor, and I suppose the father I never had, the parent and companion I would always have wanted, if that choice had been mine. He has taught me so much about the virtue of a simple life, about spirituality, about the purity of real beauty, and how to go at this messy business of life.”

Dunaway made her on-screen debut in filmmaker Otto Preminger’s 1967 Southern Gothic drama Hurry Sundown alongside legendary actors Michael Caine and Jane Fonda. Primarily filmed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, production was marred from the onset by racially motivated harassment and attacks from locals against the film’s Black cast and crew members. Initially intended to be the first of a five-picture deal Dunaway had agreed to with Preminger, the pair had a hugely contentious relationship, later leading Dunaway to sue Preminger to free herself from the contract. Preminger, known to be an enormously demanding and domineering filmmaker, clashed with many other actors including Lana Turner, Adam West, and Laurence Olivier, who all attested to Preminger’s bullying on sets.

After seeing Dunaway’s standout performance in the 1967 crime comedy The Happening, director Arthur Penn invited Dunaway to read for the role of bank robber Bonnie Parker for his forthcoming biographical neo-noir picture, Bonnie and Clyde. With the actor relatively unknown at that point, Penn had to convince Bonnie and Clyde producer and star Warren Beatty of Dunaway’s talents before he agreed to give her the part—only after Natalie Wood turned it down. Widely regarded as one of Dunaway’s strongest performances, Bonnie and Clyde marked her first Academy Award nomination, catapulting her to bona fide stardom and solidifying her as one of Hollywood’s most promising talents.

Following the success of The Thomas Crown Affair, Dunaway took the leading role in Italian filmmaker Vittorio De Sica’s critically derided romance A Place For Lovers. Starring Dunaway as a terminally ill fashion designer swept up in a whirlwind romance with a racecar driver played by Marcello Mastroianni, the new-wave drama is often cited as one of the worst films of all time. After meeting during production, Dunaway and Mastroianni had a two-year romantic relationship, ending only after Dunaway left tired of waiting for him to divorce his first wife, actress Flora Carabella, whom he had separated from a year prior. Both actors later said they’d never quite gotten over the breakup and wished it had worked out differently.

During her relationship with Mastroianni, Dunaway starred in a handful of critically panned, commercially unsuccessful, and generally forgettable films that failed to live up to her immeasurable talent. Dunaway also turned down numerous lucrative film roles during her tumultuous relationship to spend more time with Mastroianni. Following her supporting role in the 1970 western Little Big Man, Dunaway starred in Puzzle of a Downfall Child, the experimental directorial debut of her ex-fiancee Jerry Schatzberg, earning her second Golden Globe nomination.

After a stretch of unremarkable roles, Dunaway regained her footing after starring in filmmaker Stanley Kramer’s Western dramedy Oklahoma Crude. Finally recovering some critical favor, Dunaway returned to the stage in a 1972 adaptation of British playwright Harold Pinter’s Old Times before later starring as Blanche DuBois in a 1973 production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Writing about the significance of this return to stage work in her autobiography Looking for Gatsby: My Life, Dunaway wrote, “Professionally, if I hadn’t taken that step to go back to the stage, in a serious way, I think I would have suffered for it.”

Despite producer Robert Evans being wary of casting Dunaway due to her reputation for behaving poorly on set, Chinatown director Roman Polanski insisted on casting Dunaway opposite Jack Nicholson for his 1974 neo-noir film. Though Dunaway and Nicholson got along well on set, the actress constantly clashed with now-disgraced director Polanski throughout production, culminating in her storming off set after Polanski plucked a hair from her head, claiming it was interfering with lighting in the shot. Despite their acrimonious relationship, Dunaway and Polanski both later praised each another’s work and credited Chinatown as one of the greatest films of their respective careers. A massive critical and commercial success, Chinatown received eleven Academy Award nominations, including another Best Actress nomination for Dunaway.

After dating for roughly two years, Dunaway married the lead singer of The J. Geils Band, Peter Wolf, in 1974 just one day after the pair got engaged. Exhausted by her rocketing career, Dunaway took a brief hiatus from acting to focus on her marriage after starring in The Towering Inferno with Paul Newman in 1974. After briefly returning to the silver screen for Sydney Pollack’s political thriller Three Days of the Condor alongside Robert Redford, Dunaway spent another year away from acting. She turned down numerous high-profile roles including a part in Alfred Hitchcock’s final film Family Plot, a decision she later said in her autobiography that she deeply regretted. Dunaway and Wolf divorced in 1979 due to both of their career commitments causing frequent separation.

In her first Oscar-winning performance, Dunaway portrayed scheming television producer Diana Christensen in the 1976 satirical drama Network directed by Sidney Lumet. A prescient examination of the dehumanizing nature of mass media, Network was a box office and critical sensation, pulling more than $23 million at the box office and scoring ten Academy Award nominations, taking home Best Actor, Best Actress (Dunaway), Best Supporting Actress, and Best Original Screenplay. The morning after her Oscar win, Dunaway was photographed poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel by her future husband, photographer Terry O’Neill. Taken around 6 a.m. after a raucous night of celebrating, O’Neill’s picture instantly became iconic and remains his best-known work to date.

Ironically, one of Dunaway’s best-known roles came when she was cast as Bette Davis’ longtime rival, actor Joan Crawford, in the 1981 cult classic Mommie Dearest. Adapted from daughter Christina Crawford’s controversial 1978 memoir of the same name, the film was panned by both audiences and the Crawford family, who described the portrayal of Joan as highly inaccurate and sensationalized. Dunaway’s uncanny, over-the-top performance garnered a cult following of primarily gay fans, who declared it a camp classic. The drag community embraced it as well. Regardless of its subsequent positive reappraisal, Dunaway has been reticent to speak publicly about the film and stated in her autobiography that she believes it harmed her career.

For the 89th annual Academy Awards, Dunaway and former co-star Warren Beatty were asked to present that year’s Best Picture award in celebration of Bonnie and Clyde’s 50th anniversary. After mistakenly being given the wrong winner’s envelope, Dunaway announced Damien Chazelle’s La La Land as that year's winner only to quickly be informed the winner was Moonlight, a coming-of-age drama written and directed by filmmaker Barry Jenkins. Unsurprisingly, Dunaway and Beatty were both mortified and felt great remorse for the mistake despite it being entirely out of their control. The following year, both Dunaway and Beatty returned to present Best Picture without a single blunder.

After her contentious dismissal from a production of the one-woman show Tea at Five, Dunaway’s next splashy production was the HBO documentary Faye, which debuted on the network July 13, 2024. Directed by French filmmaker Laurence Bouzereau, Faye is a captivating examination of the Dunaway’s legendary career and her persistent reputation for being difficult to work with. Vulnerable, unfiltered, and uninhibited, Faye reveals a new side of Dunaway, imbuing audiences with a new persepctive of the Hollywood legend’s talent and tenacity. It was previously announced that Dunaway’s next project would be a starring role opposite Harvey Keitel in Jonathan Baker’s supernatural romance Fate.