Barbara Hershey

At 76 years old, Barbara Hershey has this physical status:

Career

Hershey's debut, three episodes of Gidget, was followed by the short-lived television series The Monroes (1966), which also featured Michael Anderson, Jr. Although Hershey said the series was helpful in her career, she expressed disappointment with her role, saying, "One week I was strong, the next weak." Hershey appeared in many other roles, including one in Doris Day's final feature film, With Six You Get Eggroll.

Hershey served in the 1969 Glenn Ford Western Heaven with a rifle. She met and began a romantic relationship with actor David Carradine, who later appeared in the television series Kung Fu (see Personal life). She appeared in the controversial drama Last Summer, which was based on Evan Hunter's eponymous book, in the same year. Hershey played Sandy, the "heavy" who has two young men (played by Bruce Davison and Richard Thomas) to rape another woman, Rhoda (played by Catherine Burns). Despite receiving an X rating for her graphic rape scene, Burns received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role.

A seagull was killed during the filming of Last Summer. "I had to throw the bird in the air to make her fly in one scene," Hershey explained. We had to reshoot the scene over and over again. I could tell the bird was drained. The bird had broken her neck on the last throw, and so I was relieved when the scene was over. Hershey felt responsible for the bird's death and changed her stage name to "Seagull" in honor of the creature. "I felt her spirit within me," she later described. "It was the only moral thing to do." The name change was not well received. Hershey, who was with Timothy Bottoms in The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder (1974) (or Vrooder's Hooch), had to forfeit half of her salary ($25,000) in order to be billed under the name "Seagull" because the designers were not in favor of the billing.

Hershey appeared in The Baby Maker, a film that explored surrogate motherhood in 1970. "Only the performances in the film save it from being a complete travesty," critic Shirley Rigby wrote about James Bridges' directing and writing. "Barbara Hershey is a fantastic little actress, much more than just another pretty face," Rigby continued.

"The most fun I ever had on a film," Hershey said when starring in Boxcar Bertha (1972). Martin Scorsese's first Hollywood film co-starring Hershey's domestic partner, David Carradine, and directed by Roger Corman. Boxcar Bertha was supposed to be a period crime drama similar to Corman's Bloody Mama (1970) or Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Despite Corman's description of it as an exploitation piece with a lot of sex and violence, Scorsese's presence made it "something much more." "Martin Scorsese has gone for mood and atmosphere more than for action," Roger Ebert, a Chicago Sun-Times reporter, wrote about the film's direction, "Martin Scorsese has gone for mood and atmosphere more than for action, and his violence is always blunt and unpleasant," the New Violence is supposed to be. In 1972, Playboy magazine published a spread reciting sexually explicit scenes from the film.

Hershey's experience with Scorsese was extended to a new role in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) as Mary Magdalene. Hershey had introduced Scorsese to the Nikos Kazantzakis film, which was based on the latter film. That collaboration culminated in an Academy Award nomination for the producer and a Golden Globe nomination for Hershey.

"I've been so linked up with David [Carradine] that people have forgotten that I am me," Hershey said in the mid-1970s. I spend the majority of my time with David." She appeared in a two-part episode of Carradine's television series Kung Fu in 1974. During his time at the Shaolin temple, she performed, under the direction of Carradine, a love interest to his role, Kwai Chang Caine. She appeared in two of Carradine's independent film projects, You and Me (1975) and Americana (1983), both of which were shot in 1973. Arnold Herzstein, her father, appeared in Americana.

She has voiced her desire to be acknowledged in her own right. She did just that in 1974, earning a gold medal at the Atlanta Film Festival for her role in the Dutch-produced film Love Comes Quietly.

Hershey appeared in The Last Hard Men (1976), later in the decade. She hoped that the film would recover her career after she saw the harm it had suffered while working with Carradine, fearing that the hippie tag she had been given was a career insult. She had shed Carradine and her "Seagull" pseudonym by this time. During the remainder of the 1970s, however, she was involved in made-for-TV movies that were referred to as "fortutable" like Flooding! (1976) Sunshine Christmas (1977), and The Glitter Palace (1977), in which she appeared as a lesbian, was a mother.

Hershey was cast in Richard Rush's The Stunt Man (1980), marking a return to the big screen after four years and garnering her critical acclaim. Hershey felt that she would be forever in debt to Rush for battling with financiers to grant her a role in the film. She also felt that the Stunt Man was a significant change for her, from playing girls to playing women.

Among the "women characters" that followed The Stunt Man were The Entity (1982), Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff (1983), in which she played Glennis Yeager, wife of test pilot Chuck Yeager; and The Natural (1984), in which Ruth Ann Steinhagen shot Robert Redford's character, inspired by a true-life event in which she shot ballplayer Eddie Waitkus. Hershey had chosen a particular hat for her "anchor" role on Harriet Bird. Director Barry Levinson disagreed with her pick, but she insisted on wearing it. Hershey was later cast as Danny DeVito's wife in the film Tin Men (1987).

Hershey and her son immigrated to Manhattan in 1986 and left California. She briefly interacted with Woody Allen, who then offered her the role of Lee in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). Hershey purchased an antique house in rural Connecticut in lieu of a Manhattan apartment. Three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe were given to the Allen photo. In addition, the film received a BAFTA award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. "Ita a wonderful gift" she referred to when she said it.

Hershey followed Hannah and her Sisters with back-to-back awards at the Cannes Film Festival for Shy People and for her role as anti-apartheid activist Diana Roth (1988). Ruth First's character was based on Ruth First's character in the previous film. In the 1980s, she played Errol Flynn's first wife, actress Lili Damita, in the TV movie version of My Wicked Ways: The Legend of Errol Flynn (1985), which was based on Flynn's autobiography. In the basketball film Hoosiers (1986), she played the love interest to Gene Hackman's character.

Hershey's Barbara Cloud of the Pittsburgh Press praised her for initiating a trend by injecting collagen into her lips for her role in the Beaches (1988). "I had no idea what Beaches was all about," Humorist Erma Bombeck said of the film, which also starred Bette Midler. Barbara Hershey's lips were the only thing I could focus on. She appeared to have been stopped off at a gas station, and someone said, 'Your lips are down 30 pounds.' I'd much rather hit "em with some air."

Hershey received an Emmy and a Golden Globe for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Special in 1990, which was based on Candy Montgomery's acquittal for Betty Gore's death. Montgomery killed Gore on Friday, June 13, 1980, in Gore's Wylie, Texas, home, by striking her 41 times with an ax. The jury found that she did so in self-defense. Hershey had a phone call with Montgomery to discuss the role in advance. Several of the real-life principals in the case were changed for the movie. Evidence of Love, the name of a 1984 book about the situation, was the film's alternative title.

In the comedic Tune in Tomorrow, Hershey reflected a woman who falls in love with her much younger nephew by marriage, played by Keanu Reeves.

Hershey played Hanna Trout, the wife of the title character in 1991's Paris Trout (1991), a made-for-cable television film. Hershey also worked with A Killing in a Small Town producer Stephen Gyllenhaal to portray a woman who has an affair with her husband's lawyer in this showtime film. The husband, an abused bigot (played by Dennis Hopper), is charged with the murder of a teenage African American girl. Hopper and Hershey were seen enacting a gruesome rape scene in the film, which was based on Pete Dexter's 1988 National Book Award-winning book. The photograph was described as a "dramatic reach deep into the deep pits of bigotry, violence, and murder." Paris Trout has been nominated for five Prime Time Emmy Awards, with some award nods for both Hershey and Hopper.

Hershey argued for her college roommate's murder in the tense whodunit Defenseless (1991) later this year.

Hershey was accused of "selling out to the small screen" because of her frequent television appearances by 1991. "Barbara Hershey is a person who goes back and forth between features and television in 1992," ABC miniseries Stay the Night (1992), prompting Associated Press reporter Jerry Buck to write, "Barbara Hershey is a person who flies back and forth between features and television very easily." In 1993, she appeared in another television miniseries, replacing Anjelica Huston as Clara Allen in the sequel series Return to Lonesome Dove. For another television appearance, The Staircase (1998), she was nominated for a Golden Satellite Award. She appeared in 22 episodes of Chicago Hope between 1999 and 2000.

In the film drama Falling Down (1993), Hershey co-starred with Joe Pesci as a nightclub owner and as the abused former wife of a homicidal Michael Douglas. Jane Campion's interpretation of the Henry James novel The Portrait of a Lady (1996) was one of the other big film in which she appeared during the 1990s. Hershey received an Academy Award and the National Society of Film Critics' Best Supporting Actress award for her role as Madame Serena Merle in the film. Last of the Dogmen, co-starring Tom Berenger, was released by Savoy Pictures in 1995. Hershey appeared in Drowning on Dry Land in 1999; during production she met co-star Naveen Andrews, with whom she began a long-term affair in 2008.

Hershey appeared in the psychological thriller Lantana in 2001. Kerry Armstrong, Anthony LaPaglia, and Geoffrey Rush were the only Australians in a majority Australian cast. Sheila Johnson, a film critic, said the film was "one of the finest to come from Australia in years." Rachael Leigh Cook, Patrick Swayze, Hilary Swank, and Colin Hanks were among the dramas on 11:14. Daniel Deronda, a two-scene cameo role, appeared in a two-scene cameo role as the Contessa in the mini-series.

Hershey made a comeback to television in the 2000s, including a season on the series The Mountain. Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning, the fourth in a sequence of made-for-TV films based on the character, was replaced by Megan Follows in 2008.

In an adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (starring David Suchet), which aired in the United States on Public Broadcast Service in July 2010, Hershey played as an American actress, Mrs. Hubbard. Hershey co-starred in Darren Aronofsky's critically acclaimed psychological thriller Black Swan (2010) opposite Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. In the year after, she co-starred in the James Wan horror film Insidious (2011). She appeared on ABC's hit show Once Upon a Time as Cora, the Queen of Hearts and mother of the Evil Queen from 2012 to 2013. She reprised her role in One episode of the show's spin-off "One Upon a Time in Wonderland" in 2014. She reprised her role in 2015 as she returned to the show for an episode of its fourth season, and in 2016, she appeared in two episodes of the show's fifth season, most notably its historic 100th episode.

Hershey portrayed series regular Ann Rutledge, the world's most influential person, as the Antichrist. The role is based on Hershey's most recent television appearances, including Once Upon A Time, The Mountain, Chicago Hope, and Lifetime's Left to Die TV movie.

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