Faye Dunaway is one of the few true legends we still have.
The iconic actress, famous for portraying tough, spiteful, and difficult women, stands among the greatest performers in cinema history.
And at 85, she’s still going strong… Best known for her twisted cry, “No more wire hangers!” in the campy cult classic Mommie Dearest, Dunaway is also remembered for Hurry Sundown with Michael Caine and Bonnie and Clyde, where she beat out Jane Fonda and Natalie Wood for the lead role.
Born in Bascom, Florida, the actress also holds three Golden Globes and an Emmy.
It’s impossible to discuss Faye Dunaway’s career without mentioning Mommie Dearest. Channeling the energy of Joan Crawford, Dunaway stunned the crew when she first stepped out of the dressing room as the iconic actress, who had died just four years earlier.
Mommie Dearest (1981) is the sensationalized film adaptation of Christina Crawford’s memoir, detailing her turbulent relationship with her adopted mother, legendary actress Joan Crawford.
Dunaway captured something both terrifying and mesmerizing. Blurring the line between reality and performance, she brought Crawford back to life on and off the set. She even told a Hollywood biographer, “I want to climb inside her skin.”
Whether Dunaway perfected her craft as a method actor or seemed possessed by Crawford’s spirit, the effect was undeniable. In her autobiography Looking for Gatsby, she wrote, “One told me it was like seeing Joan herself come back from the dead.”
The media even began reporting that Dunaway was being haunted by Crawford. The Los Angeles Times wrote of her voice, “(Dunaway) appears to have borrowed it for 12 weeks from the ghost of Joan Crawford.”
Despite the film’s iconic status, Dunaway has regrets about the role. “I think it turned my career in a direction where people would irretrievably have the wrong impression of me — and that’s an awful hard thing to beat,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “I should have known better, but sometimes you’re vulnerable and you don’t realize what you’re getting into.”
Working alongside Hollywood’s biggest leading men — Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Kirk Douglas, and Johnny Depp — Dunaway exercised restraint and kept her relationships with co‑stars strictly professional. “There were certain attractions to a couple of people — maybe Jack (Nicholson) and Warren (Beatty). Warren was in full bachelorhood, but Steve (McQueen) was happily devoted to someone, and I wouldn’t mess with that even if it were offered — but it wasn’t.”
“You just don’t,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “I have a rule: You know it’s going to ruin the performance and ruin the movie, so you don’t do that.”
But the classic beauty with the delicate cheekbones broke her rule for the suave Marcello Mastroianni, the award‑winning Italian actor who proved too tempting.
Their relationship mirrored their film A Place for Lovers (1968) — which Roger Ebert famously called “the most godawful piece of pseudo‑romantic slop I’ve ever seen!” Dunaway played a fashion designer who has an affair with a race‑car driver, played by Mastroianni. In real life, they had a three‑year whirlwind romance, which ended when he refused to leave his wife. “I was deeply in love with him,” she told People. “He was a man like no one I’d ever met, and he made me feel deeply protected.”
In 1974, she married musician Peter Wolf, lead singer of The J. Geils Band, but they divorced five years later.
A 2017 Marie Claire story revealed that Dunaway was unhappy in her marriage to Wolf and began an affair with famed British photographer Terry O’Neill. He shot the iconic image of her sitting by the Beverly Hills Hotel pool with her Oscar from Network beside her.
They married in 1983 and had a son, Liam (born in 1980), whom Dunaway long claimed was her biological child. The couple divorced in 1987.
Dunaway has often been labeled a diva — difficult, demanding, and erratic with co‑stars, crews, and even hotel staff.
In 2019, she was fired from the off‑Broadway production of Tea at Five for creating a “hostile” and “dangerous” environment. In 1994, Andrew Lloyd Webber dropped her from the Los Angeles production of Sunset Boulevard.
Jack Nicholson once nicknamed her the “gossamer grenade,” and in 1988, when Johnny Carson asked Bette Davis, “Who’s one of the worst people you know in Hollywood,” she immediately replied, “Faye Dunaway — and everyone you put in this chair would tell you the same thing.” She added, “She’s just uncooperative. Miss Dunaway is for Miss Dunaway.”
Despite her difficult reputation, Dunaway remains an actress of extraordinary talent.
In 1997, People named her one of the 50 Most Beautiful People, and in 1996, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Today, she is single.
In a 2016 People interview, she said she was still open to dating. “I’m very much a loner,” she admitted. “I always think I’d like to have a partner in life — and I would, if I could find the right person.”
Her most recent credit is from 2022, starring alongside Kevin Spacey in the Italian film L’uomo che disegnò Dio.
Hollywood simply wouldn’t be the same without Faye Dunaway. Tell us what you think of her channeling Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest, and how you feel about her reported outbursts!
