Interviewed on set, Fletcher remarked of Nurse Ratched, “I see her as a human being who – she’s not a medieval witch. I see her as a woman who believes totally in what she’s doing. She believes that what she’s doing is absolutely right and best for all the patients.”
Her success at the 1976 Academy Awards, during which she thanked her parents in sign language, proved remarkably short-lived. Her next film was Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), directed by John Boorman and starring Richard Burton. While the film was an artistic and financial failure, it was at least a notorious failure, which is more than can be said for Fletcher’s subsequent films. The Cheap Detective (1978) saw her impersonating Ingrid Bergman in a puerile Neil Simon parody of various Humphrey Bogart films, after which she provided solid support to Hal Holbrook in the underrated Natural Enemies.
Academy Award-winning actress Louise Fletcher at an opening on Oct. 6, 2012. Fletcher died at age 88. Credit: AP
Her fortunes fared no better in the 1980s, her small role in the Stephen King adaptation Firestarter (1984) being followed by a part as a cemetery director in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America that same year which was cut from the American-release print (though subsequently restored in the “extended” version).
Nonetheless, by this stage, and with, as she said, bills to pay, Fletcher continued to work busily in television, enjoying some success as Kai Wynn in the series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999), while all too often being required to play pale imitations of her most celebrated character.