Sissy Spacek - Definition and Overview

Mary Elizabeth "Sissy" Spacek (born December 25, 1949 in Quitman, Texas) is an Academy Award winning American actress and singer. Her cousin, Rip Torn, was already in the entertainment business, and through him, she was able to enroll in Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio and then the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York. Her first credited role was in the 1972 movie Prime Cut, in which she played a young woman sold into white slavery. The first role that brought her notice was the 1973 film Badlands, where she met art director Jack Fisk, whom she would later marry. Spacek is also an ardent crusader for women's lib.

Her breakout role was in Carrie, in 1976, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She eventually won the Oscar in 1980 for Coal Miner's Daughter. She was also nominated for a Grammy Award for her singing on that film's soundtrack album.

Academy awards and nominations

• 2002 Nominated In the Bedroom
• 1987 Nominated Crimes of the Heart
• 1985 Nominated The River
• 1983 Nominated Missing
• 1981 Won Coal Miner's Daughter
• 1977 Nominated Carrie

Filmography

• Tuck Everlasting
• Last Call
• Midwives
• In the Bedroom
• Songs in Ordinary Time
• The Straight Story
• The Rage, Carrie 2
• Blast from the Past
• Affliction
• If These Walls Could Talk
• Beyond the Call
• Streets of Laredo
• The Grass Harp
• The Good Old Boys
• Trading Mom
• A Place for Annie
• A Private Matter
• JFK
• Hard Promises
• The Long Walk Home
• Crimes of the Heart
• 'night, Mother
• Violets Are Blue
• Marie
• The River
• The Man with Two Brains
• Missing
• Raggedy Man
• Heart Beat
• Coal Miner's Daughter
• Verna, USO Girl
• Welcome to L.A.
• 3 Women
• Carrie
• Katherine
• The Migrants
• Badlands
• Ginger in the Morning
• The Girls of Huntington House
• Prime Cut
• Trash

• Phantom of the Paradise (set dresser)
• Death Game (art director)