FRANCES MCDORMAND: HOLLYWOOD’S reluctant golden girl
She’s in a league of her own, and that’s where she wants to stay
hink of showbiz A-listers and it’s easy to rattle off a shortlist of lookalike stars, romcom giants, scream queens and kings, and the archetypal Liam Neeson (or his equivalent), always playing that one well-worn role.
But there’s one woman who’s reinventing what it means to be a Hollywood star – and her name is Frances Mcdormand. The 63-year-old acting legend – who last month picked up her third Best Actress Oscar for her role in Nomadland, putting her just behind Katharine Hepburn at four – takes the clichéd image of an air-kissing, age-defying, ego-tripping star, scrunches it up into a scrappy ball of paper, and stomps down on it in a pair of her famous Birkenstock sandals. And, by all accounts, her recent record-making
Oscar win – she also collected the Best Picture nod, as co-producer of the same film – elevated Frances to almost-mythical status, especially as this month marks the 25-year anniversary of her first Oscar winning role, as the unassuming cop Marge in classic crime caper Fargo.
AGAINST TYPE
So, how did Hollywood’s most reluctant player come to be its brightest, most applauded movie star? The answer, if you ask her, is that she’s never treated herself as such and would balk at the very suggestion. “Fifth grade is the first time I can remember thinking, ‘Oh, I know what they think I am, and I’m going to subvert it,” she said in a recent interview, adding that, after her first Oscar win, she made concerted attempts to rebel against the Holly wood mould. “I made a very conscious effort not to do press and publicity for ten years, in what other people would think would be a very dangerous moment in a female actor’s career,” she said. “It gave me a mystery back to who I was, and then in the roles I performed, I could take an audience to a place where someone who sold watches or perfume and magazines couldn’t.”
Having been born into what she has described as a “white trash” family, the actress was abandoned at birth and adopted by an ultra-religious couple who moved from church to church during her childhood. It’s perhaps that ironically nomadic existence that formed her trademark unfussiness, although she’s anything but conservative. In fact, she’s more usually described as someone quirky and off-beat who might flinch at the idea of doing press, but made a rare exception in 2003, when she posed on the front of the cannabis magazine High Times holding a
‘It gave me a mystery’
spliff. As she herself said, it’s all about subversion.
STRONG BONDS
She is traditional in her own unconventional way, though, especially when it comes to her marriage to director Joel Coen, which after 36 years is still going strong. Fittingly, it was Joel who, alongside his brother Ethan, gave Frances her big break in their debut film Blood Simple, and she’s since starred in eight
Coen Brothers films, including Fargo. The couple, who adopted their son Pedro from Paraguay in 1995, live a uniquely unhollywood existence, in a small coastline town, the name of which they refuse to disclose.
And they remain each other’s number one support, especially when it comes to Joel championing Frances’ rebellion against showbiz norms by not having cosmetic surgery. “I have not mutated myself in any way,” she said last year. “Joel and I have this conversation a lot . He literally has to stop me physically from saying something to people, to friends who have had work. I’m so full of fear and rage about what they have done. I’ve been with a man for 35 years who looks at me and loves what he sees.”
If you ask us, there’s something wildly encouraging about the future of Hollywood that, even in these highly superficial times, a make-up shunning actress who values her craft over fame and fortune could come to be its leading lady. But let it be known that Frances’ power isn’t in her relatability – she’s not by any means your average everywoman. She is, in fact, entirely herself, known to her friends and family as “Fran” – a one-of-a-kind powerhouse.
Last month, as she accepted the Best Picture Oscar for Nomadland, she turned to the side and let out a loud and defiant wolf’s howl in honour of the film’s sound-mixer Michael Wolf Snyder, who died in March. And that is the magic of Frances Mcdormand – the lone wolf of Hollywood whose mighty voice simply can’t be ignored. ■