![]() ![]() In the past, she has said that his death became the inspiration for her career. But somehow she managed to turn it into a positive. She adored Robbie and losing him was shattering. At the age of 17, her 18-year-old brother, Robbie, died of leukaemia. In this case, it was an experience that defined her life. As always, she drew on lived experience to make the part as real possible. In Todd Field’s In the Bedroom, she played the mother of a young man killed by his lover’s ex-husband. I tell young actors to trust themselves, because acting is just how to unlock what’s inside of you.” Night Sky is not the first time she has played somebody who has lost a child. “I’m certainly not the best actor in the world, or the most inventive, or the most schooled, but we all just work out our own little process – what works for us. While she learned about “sense memory” exercises, she didn’t have time to master other techniques. She says she worked like that in the first place because she attended Lee Strasberg’s Theatre and Film Institute for only a few months and dismisses herself as a “one-trick pony”. Spacek has a tendency to belittle her achievements. I trust myself more now not to have to hang on to whatever emotion.” Actually, she says, over time, she did begin to heed Lemmon’s advice, because she realised working that way was unsustainable. “I pretty much stayed as intense as ever. “So thank you, Jack Lemmon.”Īnd you became less intense? She laughs. You’ll wear yourself out.’ That was some of the best advice I ever got.” She looks up to the heavens. It’s either going to happen or it’s not, so don’t give everything over to the misery before you’re even there. When I worked with Jack Lemmon – what a great man! – he said to me: ‘You know, you should ease up on yourself. I’d carry that misery around with me all day. “If I was in a film that called for a very intense emotional scene in the afternoon, I’d get to the set and be in that mood all morning. She found it draining, she says, not least because of her naturally sunny disposition. ![]() When she played a suicidal daughter in 1986’s ’night, Mother, she felt she had to be in despair to do justice to the part. It’s not quite method acting, but it doesn’t make for the most relaxed of working lives. Once she finds it, she buries herself in them. Spacek has always looked for common ground with her characters. ![]() Photograph: Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy It’s a lovely, buoyant voice that ramps up her already turbocharged enthusiasm. So I thought: OK, well, I’ll figure out the sci-fi part later.” Spacek still speaks with a Texas twang – “my” is “mah”, “I” is “ah”. You don’t often come across roles like that. “The thing that drew me to it was that wonderful relationship with her husband. “I’d never done sci-fi and that frightened me because I thought: ‘What do I have in my life that gives me anything to understand what she’s experiencing with that thing in the back yard?’” So what did you draw on? “Well, I don’t know.” She giggles, perplexed. “That was an interesting experiment,” Spacek says. What makes it so compelling is the acting – Spacek is kindly and fragile, while Simmons is cantankerous but loving as a couple trying to come to terms with the suicide of their son many years previously. A secret chamber in the back yard gives Irene York (Spacek) and her husband, Franklin (JK Simmons), access to a deserted planet. The series’ premise could not be more preposterous. We see it again in her new Amazon series Night Sky, where her character spends night after night staring at the stars in wonderment. In so many of her films, Spacek’s characters marvel at the beauty of life. When her classmate Tommy reads a poem he pretends to have written, Carrie declares with dreamy awe that it is “beautiful”. Spacek plays Carrie with an almost religious sense of rapture. Carrie may be more famous for its ghoulishness, but the luminous purity she bring to the part is what makes it so memorable. However creepy the characters she played in the early days, she endowed them with an otherwordly innocence. ![]()
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