The Reel Review
The complicated life and career of Oscar, Emmy and BAFTA award winning actress Faye Dunaway, one of Hollywood’s last movie stars whose personal life was as dramatic as and even mirrored her acting performances, is explored in this documentary on Max.
The film doesn’t shy away from Dunaway’s reputation for being difficult, as Dunaway herself illustrates while preparing to be interviewed in the film’s opening scene. Dunaway blames her lifetime of bad behavior on having bipolar disorder, which she says is now being successfully treated. Interviews with friend Sharon Stone and Mommie Dearest co-star Mara Hobel present a softer, friendlier side of the dedicated perfectionist, whom Jack Nicholson affectionally called Dread (as in Dreaded Dunaway) due to her volatile reputation while working on director Roman Polanski’s Chinatown.
Director Laurent Bouzereau captures the highs and lows of Dunaway’s career, starting with her childhood as an always-on-the-move Army brat, which she blames for her inability to form lasting relationships, her big break in 1969’s Bonnie and Clyde and other notable films – like Chinatown, Network and, of course, the now camp classic, Mommie Dearest. Avoiding such sensitive topics as cosmetic surgery, her ex-husbands, her son, and Dunaway’s epic feuds with Roman Polanski and Andrew Lloyd Webber give Faye the feel of a tightly-controlled hagiography – Bouzereau is after all, a very close friend of Dunaway’s son, Liam. Even so, Faye is still a well done, and otherwise comprehensive documentary.
REEL FACTS
• Photographer Terry O’Neill snapped this iconic, contemplative 1977 photo of Faye Dunaway the morning after her Best Actress Oscar win for Network. The two would marry six years later.
• In 2003, despite Dunaway’s earlier indications that she had given birth to Liam, ex-husband Terry O’Neill revealed that their son, Liam, was in fact adopted. Terry O’Neill died in November 2019 of prostate cancer at the age of 81.
• Faye Dunaway’s first marriage, to lead singer Peter Wolf of the pop group The J. Geils Band, ended after five years in 1979, just prior to three of his band’s biggest hits: “Love Stinks,” “Freeze Frame,” and “Centerfold.” Wolf, now 78, never remarried.
Video & Photo
