‘Bonnie and Clyde’: The movie that “touched the core” of Faye Dunaway
Over a truly remarkable six decades in the spotlight of American cinema, Faye Dunaway has persistently emerged as one of Hollywood’s most enduring stars. With a breakthrough role in Bonnie and Clyde and several further instances of her ability to genuinely embody her characters, Dunaway is rightfully considered one of the all-time greats.
Whether it was playing Evelyn Mulwray in 1974’s Chinatown or Joan Crawford in 1981’s Mommie Dearest, Dunaway has always been at the top of her performative game and with the likes of The Thomas Crown Affair, Little Big Man, Network and Eyes of Laura Mars also to her name, it’s easy to see why she is held in such high esteem.
However, it’s Bonnie and Clyde with which Dunaway will forever be associated and her brilliant portrayal of the outlaw Bonnie Parker saw the iconic actor receive her first Academy Award nomination. In fact, the character is so tied to Dunaway that she feels an immense connection with her, as per her autobiography Looking for Gatsby.
“Never have I felt so close to a character as I felt to Bonnie,” Dunaway wrote in the book. “She was a yearning, edgy, ambitious southern girl who wanted to get out of wherever she was. I knew everything about wanting to get out, and getting out doesn’t come easy. But with Bonnie, there was real tragic irony. She got out only to see that she was heading nowhere, and the end was death.”
“There was a real kind of fierceness I’d seen in Bonnie that I recognized in myself as well,” the actor added. “You look at photos of her and see it in her eyes, the set of her jaw. It takes fierceness in life to get ahead. I already knew that. Bonnie was Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof time.”
The biographical neo-noir crime movie, directed by Arthur Penn with Warren Beatty starring as Clyde Barrow opposite Dunaway, with Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman and Estelle Parson in support, was released in 1967 and served as something of a watershed moment in that Hollywood productions began to openly use more sex and violence.
Concluding her thoughts of the character, Dunaway signed off, “She knew the only way to get what she wanted was through her own sheer force of will. She was driven by her own desire. I know that territory – you do whatever it takes. She wanted to be something special, something out of the ordinary.”
Check out Dunaway in the trailer for Bonnie and Clyde below.
