Dickenson says she deserved an Oscar.
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PrometheusTree64 — 12 years ago(December 10, 2013 09:09 AM)
Angie has confessed to having "a healthy ego" but she's not known for being obnoxious at all.
And you presumably need one (an ego a healthy one) in the business.
For my money, at the time (and even now) DRESSED TO KILL was overrated amongst the critics The museum sequence was effective, there were many other moments the film offered which were not unimpressive, but the movie's sometimes cartoonish tone to say nothing of its late-'70s fetishistic flavor kept it from working as well as it's reputed to have. (And Nancy Allen was awful).
But Angie got some of her best reviews in the film.
In the '60s, Dickinson was smiled upon lightly by the critics who found her engaging and at times a rather good actress, but, with the collapse of the old studio system and new stars no longer being appropriately groomed, Angie found herself in a slew of
also-ran
films in which her male co-stars were the main draw. She was becoming A-list more by association than anything else (although POINT BLANK was pretty good, albeit ignored in 1967).
She could be a good actress and was more than just "eye candy" but she wasn't exactly getting important parts in good films.
She admitted that she'd "never felt like a movie star" until she'd had her own TV series, POLICE WOMAN, in the '70s. And while the first season of that show was good (by TV standards of the day) the series was sabotaged during its second season due to pressure over feminist complaints about her character being "too sexy" (despite the show creating an avalanche of applications from women for employment at law enforcement agencies around the country, and that show going to #1 in numerous countries, including in America one summer). The result was a major squelching of her charisma on that show, which was a strategic mistake.
IMHO, her acting never really recovered. It was as if she'd been made so self-conscious about her demeanor following the off-camera firestorm surrounding POLICE WOMAN that her thespianic mojo had been stolen. They'd sucked the diva-like focus right out of her.
In fact, she said a few years ago that, "whenever I tried to be sexy, it was ludicrous!"
Which isn't true at all. But her detractors apparently tricked her.
Anyway, by the time DTK came out in theatres in 1980, she was glad to get the good reviews for her acting If she could have garnered an Oscar nomination in the supporting category is in question, and winning is another thing altogether.
But one would imagine screen acting careers are rife with disappointments.
Non-sequiturs are delicious. -
SimplemindedSociety — 12 years ago(December 20, 2013 05:48 PM)
Her peers(Suzanne Plesehette,Stella Stevens,etc.) were just as good, if not better, but never got the feature film roles she consistently did.
I remember her on the Tonight Show in the 80's saying how much of a 'shame' it was that DTK didn't escalate her career. There was no reason for it to. She was lucky to get DTK,since there were other actresses who could have also played the role. It would had been a good comeback for Tina Louise(though she wasn't on the casting radar) -
BulmaPunkRocker — 12 years ago(January 16, 2014 09:25 PM)
Her ego wasn't exactly "healthy", for what I've read.
She really thought she deserves an Oscar for this role, or she was just trying to get attention?
Please excuse my terrible redaction, english is not my native language. -
BulmaPunkRocker — 12 years ago(February 04, 2014 09:52 AM)
I've read this i.e.: "[on Dressed to Kill (1980)] I'm sorry I didn't try to go for an Academy Award for that role. I think I could have won it. But the studio didn't want to put up the campaign, and I felt that I didn't want to go for a supporting-actor award, because I'd always thought of myself as the lead, even though by then I wasn't getting starring roles. I regret it now. Of course, [Brian De Palma] is to blame for the great performance."
IMHO, she should have try it for supporting actress if she thinks she deserved it. Why she thinks she deserves only lead roles recognition? And I don't think her acting was Academy Award-Winning. But that's just me.
I'm very sorry about what happened to her daughter Nikki, indeed, but that's nothing to do with what we are talking about here.
Please excuse my terrible redaction, english is not my native language. -
SimplemindedSociety — 12 years ago(January 21, 2014 06:03 PM)
'Her ego wasn't exactly "healthy", for what I've read.
She really thought she deserves an Oscar for this role, or she was just trying to get attention? 'Of course she has an ego. what prolific actor doesn't? Many people with egos are still basically nice people.
My only question is how an actor could say such without sounding immodest. Honesty is one thing, but how many actors do you hear say that they deserved an Oscar?(aside from Bette Davis) -
renatom1 — 11 years ago(October 12, 2014 04:23 PM)
It doesn't matter whether Angie thought she could win an Oscar or not. 1980 was a pretty competitive year for actresses. Had she been nomiated, she would have had to compete against Mary Tyler Moore for
Ordinary People
and Sissy Spacek for
Coal Miner's Daughter
. -
PrometheusTree64 — 11 years ago(October 29, 2014 04:52 PM)
Angie specified the supporting category. But not only did she not want her name submitted in that category, the Filmways Studio was too small to really afford a campaign.
The most profound of sin is tragedy unremembered. -
bliss66 — 10 years ago(December 25, 2015 03:54 PM)
At the time the interest in her performance was about the use of a body double.
A supporting nod, maybe, but a win in either category - I doubt it. It was a very hard "R" rating initially an "X" - and not in a naive kind of "Midnight Cowboy" way.
What clip would they consider? The scene where she fantasises about getting raped in the shower? The scene where she has sex with a stranger in a cab? Or the scene where she gets slashed to death in an elevator? It wasn't really AMPAS stuff. -
gobears87 — 9 years ago(August 20, 2016 04:09 AM)
She's really good in the art gallery sequence.
I don't think she had a chance to win an award. The film is so lurid and melodramatic, I don't think her role would be taken seriously by other members of the academy. -
InherentlyYours — 9 years ago(September 29, 2016 01:06 PM)
I don't think she had a chance to win an award. The film is so lurid and melodramatic, I don't think her role would be taken seriously by other members of the academy.
Janet Leigh was taken seriously in what was a an even more lurid non-Academy type of film, and 20 yrs earlier. I don't that is the reason Angie didn't receive it. Leigh had more range and nuance demanded of her in her role (even without a shower-sequence). She expressed more of what she was feeling (a repressed-hysteria) without dialogue, than Angie did.
I have a problem with praise given to non-dialogue acting and think it's a gray area; judging a performance by facial expressions. Not to say that Angie is not a worthwhile actress, but if you could translate her emotions as expressed non-verbally during that art gallery sequence into verbal-acting, I wonder if it would be as effective. Raquel Welch can be effective with non-verbal acting, until she starts speaking (though I'm not comparing Welch with Angie). Being able to emote physically without dialogue seems to be in a different category. Now, if there was a scene with Angie genuinely inducing tears without a cut-away, that would be different.
Also, "ego" has taken on a negative connotation; you can a very nice person and still have a big ego. One is exclusive of the other -
rascal67 — 9 years ago(October 03, 2016 12:06 AM)
Janet Leigh was taken seriously in what was a an even more lurid non-Academy type of film, and 20 yrs earlier.
I don't see how Psycho-60' is more lurid than Dressed To Kill-80'. Psycho was sensational and broke ground and boundaries for "it's time"; but DTK has way more graphic sexual and violence themes in it and still had plenty of shockable elements for audiences of the late 70's, even if it mirror's the Hitchcock classic. I would agree though, that Leigh gave a technically better performance than Dickinson, I just relate more to Dickinson's character and the way she portrayed it.
Don't eat the whole ones! Those are for the guests.