Faye Dunaway

Faye Dunaway is an American actress. Dunaway won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Network after receiving previous nominations for the critically acclaimed films Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown. She has starred in a variety of films, including The Thomas Crown Affair, The Towering Inferno, Three Days of the Condor, and Mommie Dearest. Dunaway was born Dorothy Faye Dunaway in Bascom, Florida, the daughter of Grace April, a housewife, and John MacDowell Dunaway, Jr., a career army non-commissioned officer. She attended the University of Florida, Florida State University, and Boston University, but graduated from the University of Florida in theater. In 1962, Dunaway joined the American National Theater and Academy. Her father served in the Second World War and was a fallen comrade in the European Campaign. She has also built a house for her parents in Bascom and has a road named after her.

Dunaway appeared on Broadway in 1962 as the daughter of Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons. Her first screen role was in 1967 in The Happening. In 1967, she was in Hurry Sundown, but that same year, she gained the leading female role in Bonnie and Clyde opposite Warren Beatty, which earned her an Oscar nomination. She also starred in 1968 with Steve McQueen in the caper film The Thomas Crown Affair. It was in the 1970s that she began to stretch her acting abilities in such films as Three Days of the Condor, Little Big Man, Chinatown, The Three/Four Musketeers, Eyes of Laura Mars, and Network, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress as the scheming TV executive Diana Christensen. She worked with such leading men as Dustin Hoffman, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Tommy Lee Jones, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Duvall.