The Oscar winning actress Louise Fletcher has died at the age of 88.
The Hollywood star won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Nurse Mildred Ratched in the 1975 comedy drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Although no cause was specified, her agent David Shaul said she passed away in her sleep at the home in Montdurausse, France, surrounded by her family.
READ MORE: Oscar winner and Star Trek star Louise Fletcher dies aged 88
Fletcher enjoyed an acting career that spanned more than 60 years, including a recurring role on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as a religious leader, Kai Winn Adam.
She also had guest-starring roles on Picket Fences and Joan of Arcadia, which brought Emmy nominations in 1996 and 2004, respectively.
But the mum-of-two from Birmingham, Alabama, USA, was best known as the heartless Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Director Milos Forman, then casting for the film, based on Ken Kesey’s 1962 book about life in an Oregon psychiatric hospital, spotted her in Thieves Like Us, in 1974.
In the film, the Nurse Ratched humiliates her patients and revokes their privileges on a whim.
When she can’t control a new arrival, Randle McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, she administers shock therapy on him, then has him lobotomised.
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When accepting her Oscar, the actress said: “Well, it looks like you all hated me so much that you’ve given me this award for it, and I’m loving every minute of it. And all I can say is, I’ve loved being hated by you.”
Fletcher was born to an Episcopal minister, Rev Robert C. Fletcher, and his wife, Estelle, on July 22, 1934.
They had both lost their hearing when they were children, he reportedly when he was struck by lightning, she to illness.
On its 2003 list of the 100 greatest villains in the annals of motion pictures, the American Film Institute placed Nurse Ratched at number five, behind only Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates, Darth Vader and the Wicked Witch of the West.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
