JURY

Portrait: Faye Dunaway

Her majestic bearing, sharp green eyes and beautifully chiselled features have left a lasting impression on film and in the minds of all the persons who have met her.

Faye Dunaway is certainly one of the most queenly figures of American cinema, still retaining a great aura of mystery after more than 30 years in theatre and films.

Born in a small farming community, she recalls from her childhood the yearning desire to become an actress. "I always thought and wanted to become an actress" she confides. "My grandmother says I told her I wanted to become an actress. I don't know why it stuck in my mind. But there are very colourful people in my family ; my grandfather was a preacher..."

Her father was a career army officer who gave her an itinerant life, between the USA and Europe. After attending the University of Florida and the school of Fine and Applied Arts at Boston University, she headed for New York joined the Lincoln Center Repertory Company in 1962.

"I always wanted to be on the stage first. I remember seeing a film with Natalie Wood, and I thought, wrongly : "It looks too easy. Anybody could do that". For some reason, it turned out to be an intelligent instinct: theatre is the only place where you can learn how to act. And then you can take that to cinema. You need that technique, because there is so much else happening in cinema that you never learn how to act there."

After appearing in such plays as "A Man for All Seasons" and "After the Fall", her performance in the Off-Broadway production "Hogan's Goat" led to her 1967 screen debut in Elliot Silverstein's The Happening.

Two years later she got her first Oscar nomination opposite Warren Beatty in one the most known films of all time, Bonnie and Clyde based on these gangsters' true story. Director Arthur Penn made it a modern western with a graphic depiction of violence leading to the particularly striking bloodshed death of the duo. Bonnie's blond, sophisticated sensuality is the natural counterpart of Clyde's distracted impotence.

She was again nominated for an Academy Award for Chinatown, Roman Polanski's deliciously convoluted thriller where she epitomizes the mysterious femme fatale opposite private eye Jack Nicholson - who directed a sequel, The Two Jakes in 1990.

Reportedly, the relationship between Polanski and his leading actress was very tense on the set. When asked about the kind of directors she prefers, Faye Dunaway simply explains that "collaboration is the main duty of an actress. She must help the director make the movie as he sees it. It's not pleasant when the director is dictatorial and does not let you bring forth ideas : it's hard to be real and natural then. I have had directors who wanted to tell me exactly what to do, and it's difficult because somehow you're trying to find a way to survive and to put your own life into the thing that he's asking you to do. The best directors that I've had let the actors bring what they have, and then shape it or choose something else. It is necessary to find a kind of life in the relationship."

Faye Dunaway finally won the Oscar in 1976 for Network, Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky's biting satire on the inner workings of television.

In 1981, she gave an astonishing portrayal of Joan Crawford in Frank Perry's Mommie Dearest, adapted from Christine Crawford's controversial autobiography which portrays a cruel and manipulative mother.

After a relatively dormant period in the 80s, she made a strong comeback as a drunkard opposite Mickey Rourke in Barbet Schroeder's Barfly (1987).

In 1990, she produced and appeared in the TV-movie Cold Sassy Tree, a small town drama reflecting on the lives of residents of a rural community.

In 1992, she played an eccentric woman in Emir Kusturica's dark comedy Arizona Dreams. She encountered Johnny Depp again in Jeremy Leven's Don Juan de Marco in 1995.

In 1999, she appeared in John McTiernan's brilliant new version of Thomas Crown Affair, and personified Yolande d'Aragon in Luc Besson's compelling Joan of Arc.

"Luc Besson is wonderful. He's very specific about what he wants, which is sometimes difficult. But it's like a family with him and HE does the films, which I love."

Her next projects comprise a film about greek opera singer Maria Callas, for whom she nourishes a deep passion. "She's so strong, so full of energy. She compels you. I want to make a film that captures the beauty of who she was, and what she had to pay for her art, and who she really was beneath the diva's controlling, tempestuous temperament."

The same passionate, demanding temperament can be found in the straightforwardness of a great actress who urges young men and women to feel free to make the films they want and wage their own personal journey "against the forces of society that try to put you into their system."

Robin Gatto