Biography
Born in Birmingham, Alabama to Episcopal minister Robert Fletcher
and his wife Estelle, both of whom were deaf, Louise Fletcher was
introduced to performing at a young age by the aunt who taught her
to speak. After graduating from the University of North Carolina -
Chapel Hill, she took a trip out west with her roommates, finding
herself in Los Angeles without enough money to return home. She
took a temporary job as a receptionist and signed up for acting
classes at night. Soon she was working regularly in television and
film, but after marrying producer Jerry Bick and having two sons,
the actress took a long hiatus to raise her children. Returning to
work in 1974 in Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us, Fletcher came to
the attention of director Milos Forman, who was casting the
difficult role of the nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. She
won the role - and then the Academy Award - portraying deadly,
inflexible Nurse Ratched, who has since become a cultural icon.
Numerous film roles followed, including co-starring turns with
Peter Falk in The Cheap Detective and with Richard Burton in
Exorcist II: The Heretic. Fletcher has appeared in a number of
science fiction and horror classics such as Firestarter,
Brainstorm, and Flowers in the Attic. Though she earned an Emmy
Award nomination for her recurring role on Picket Fences, Fletcher
is perhaps best known to recent television audiences as Kai Winn
from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and as Nora Bloom from the cult
classic VR5.
Biography courtesy of the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com).
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