It may seem incredible to many movie fans but Faye Dunaway turns 70 on January 14, 2011. Was Chinatown that long ago? Network and The Thomas Crown Affair? She has had a strong film career though in later years has taken her turn at doing questionable material.
Dunaway was born in Bascom, Florida, 5 miles south of the Alabama border. The tiny town was a far-cry from a city like Los Angeles where she would achieve fame; there wasn't much to Bascom in 1941 when she was born and that's still the case as the 2000 census put the pop. at 106. Her father was a career soldier and her mother took care of things at home and there was nothing in her family history that suggested the greatness she would achieve.
Faye Dunaway: Oscar Winning Actor
She started her University career in Florida by going into education but switched to acting and soon transferred to Boston University. She excelled and by graduation, at 21, was offered a place in the prestigious American National Theatre and Academy and immediately cast in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons on Broadway. She had her start and soon after starred in Arthur Miller's After the Fall, playing the character that Miller had based on his former wife, Marilyn Monroe.
Continuing in theatre she worked with great practitioners of the craft including Elia Kazan. Her big break in films was in 1967 with director Arthur Penn alongside Warren Beatty as the gangster Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde . Dunaway was nominated for an Oscar and while Katherine Hepburn won for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Bonnie Parker put Faye Dunaway on the Hollywood map. She would go on to a string of strong films and win her Oscar for 1976's Network.
Acting Career Decline Until Barfly
After a flop in Mommie Dearest in 1981 she went through a brief decline but came back again in 1987's quirky Barfly with Mickey Rourke. The film was directed by Barbet Schroeder and written by writer Charles Bukowski, known more to University students and fans of offbeat short stories but the alcoholic Wanda Wilcox was perfect for Dunaway and the offers increased in quantity and quality.
There have been, as of the 90's, forays into television, including doing a brief sitcom with Robert Urich, winning an Emmy for an episode of the TV show Columbo, doing a year on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and being a judge on a reality show called Starlet.
Dunaway Directing 'Master Class'
Lately her career has taken her into directing. She had toured for years in Terence McNally's play Master Class, about the life of world famous soprano Maria Callas, and secured the rights to make a film from it and is producing, directing, has done some writing on and is acting in, the film. The film is half competed and rumored to be having money and other problems.
She has a son, Liam O'Neill, now 30, but both her marriages have ended in divorce, to the singer from the J. Geils band, Peter Wolf, and later to Liam's father, Terry O'Neill. Today there are reports that she is in a court battle with a former employee who claims she owes him three weeks pay and reports from 2009 that claim she was facing eviction from her home in New York for not paying her rent.
The 70-year-old says her current goal is to get Master Class finished in the New Year.
