Louise Fletcher

Estelle Louise Fletcher was born on July 22, 1934, in Birmingham, Alabama, the second of four children of Estelle ('''' Caldwell) and the Reverend Robert Capers Fletcher, an Episcopal missionary from Arab, Alabama. Her parents were deaf and worked with the deaf/hard-of-hearing, but Fletcher and her siblings, Roberta, John, and Georgianna, so the children were sent in turns to live with Estelle's hearing sister in Texas for three months at a time to ensure they learned spoken English. Fletcher's father founded more than 40 churches for the deaf in Alabama. She received a bachelor's degree in drama from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1957. ==Career==

and Fletcher in Maverick (1959) Fletcher began appearing in several television series including Lawman (1958) and Maverick (1959). (The Maverick episode "The Saga of Waco Williams" with James Garner was the series's highest-rated episode.) Also in 1959, she appeared in an episode of the original Untouchables television series starring Robert Stack, "Ma Barker and Her Boys", as Elouise. Fletcher recalled having greater success being cast in Westerns due to her height: In 1960, Fletcher made two guest appearances on Perry Mason, as defendant Gladys Doyle in "The Case of the Mythical Monkeys", and as Susan Connolly in "The Case of the Larcenous Lady". In the summer of 1960, she was cast as Roberta McConnell in the episode "The Bounty Hunter" of Tate, starring David McLean. In 1974, Fletcher returned to film in the crime drama Thieves Like Us, co-produced by her husband Jerry Bick and Robert Altman, who also directed. When the two had a falling out on Altman's next project, Nashville (1975), Altman decided to cast Lily Tomlin for the role of Linnea Reese, initially created for and by Fletcher. Meanwhile, director Miloš Forman saw Fletcher in Thieves and cast her as McMurphy's nemesis Nurse Ratched in ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). Fletcher gained international recognition and fame for the role, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress, as well as a BAFTA Award and Golden Globe. She was only the third actress ever to win an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award for a single performance, after Audrey Hepburn and Liza Minnelli. When Fletcher accepted her Oscar, she used sign language to thank her parents. She also earned Emmy Award nominations for her guest roles on Picket Fences (1996), and later on Joan of Arcadia (2004). In 2009, Fletcher appeared in Heroes as the physician mother of character Emma Coolidge. In 2011 and 2012, she appeared on four episodes of Shameless'' as Grammy Gallagher, Frank Gallagher's foul-mouthed and hard-living mother, who is serving a prison sentence for manslaughter related to a meth lab explosion. She portrayed the recurring role of Rosie on the series Girlboss (2017). ==Personal life==

Fletcher married producer Jerry Bick, divorcing in 1977. Fletcher took an 11-year break from acting to raise them. ==Death==

Fletcher died at her home in Montdurausse, France, on September 23, 2022, at the age of 88. ==Filmography==

Film Television == Accolades ==