No one looked like her.
No one sounded like her.
And everyone in Hollywood knew it.
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(At her Fort Worth, Texas, high school, her nickname was Sparrowlegs.)
Nobody looked like her, sounded like her, or acted like her.
She was an oddball fairy-tale princess.
She appeared in some of the greatest works of the most seismically inventive era of American movies.
Her agony over their split made an already hellish shoot even worse.)
We filmed that for about three weeks, Duvall said.
It was very hard.
Jack was so good so damn scary.
I can only imagine how many women go through this kind of thing.
Allen would only let Duvall read pages of the script that her character appeared in.
A compulsive reader, she began thinking about beloved books she could adapt for film and TV.
and gave back the film rights after four years of struggle.
(Cowgirlswas ultimately made by Gus Van Sant, starring Uma Thurman.)
Showcasing subversive or ironic versions of classic fairy tales, the series would be innocent yet knowing.
It debuted September 11, 1982.
Wherever he laid his hat was his home.
Idle returned to narrate The Pied Piper of Hamelin and play the piper.
The list goes on.
Susan Sarandon as Beauty and Klaus Kinski as the Beast.
Elliott Gould as the Giant in Jack and the Beanstalk.
Tatum ONeal as Goldilocks.
Harry Dean Stanton as Rip Van Winkle.
Altman regular Karen Black, whose work inTrilogy of Terrorwas pure nightmare fuel, played the Sea Witch.
Some of the casting had an extra-dramatic subtext, too.
That kind of invention had been Duvalls specialty as an actress.
Each performance was as stacked with layers as a geological core sample.
Her Showtime series won a Peabody Award and two prime-time Emmys.
Thats how arresting she was.
Adler later told the Los AngelesTimes, The paintings werent great but her sales pitch was.
She had the most amazing amount of energy Id ever seen in anyone.
She looked like a flower; her face was painted with marks around her eyes to accent them.
Altman cast Duvall as Suzanne Davis, Brewsters fairy godmother.
(How fitting that her first film role would unwittingly anticipate her work as a producer.)
I thought it was an act.
Meaning a performance, because he could not process what he was seeing.
Who looked like that?
Who behaved that way?
Who would wear such gigantic false eyelashes?
She answered them all in her trademark Texas-kooky deadpan, and Altman realized she wasnt kidding.
That was really her.
She was an untrained, truthful person.
As Millie, Duvall channels the Fort WorthbywayofAlpha Centauri energy that made Altman adore her.
At Millies kitchen table later in the movie, she says to Pinky, You dont like tomatoes?
They used to call em love apples, but I dont love em.
Millie says tomatoes as tuhMAYtuhsand runs the last five words of the last sentence together: ButidunnLUVum.
And she smiles the whole time, barely moving her body.
Her burning cigarette hangs rigidly in space next to her head.
Its a dark-horse candidate for her finest work.
The same thing happened when I was 27.
It wasnt until I was in my early 30s that I realized it was a futile goal to have.
Youre never grown up.
Were all still dealing with the same hopes, same fears, same dreams that we had as children.
