Louise Fletcher obituary
msn.comKen Kesey’s countercultural novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. As Nurse Ratched, who instils fear into the patients in a mental institution without ever raising her voice, she was calmly terrifying.
The part had shades of the panto villain about it, but Fletcher permitted vital glimpses into the human control-freak beneath this worthy exterior, notably in her standoffs with Jack Nicholson as the rebellious anti-hero McMurphy.
She was 40 at the time and had only recently returned to acting after a long break. She auditioned repeatedly for the role, unaware that the producers were courting and being rebuffed by actors including Jane Fonda, Angela Lansbury and Ellen Burstyn.
The director Miloš Forman envisaged the part as “the personification of evil”, but revised his opinion after casting Fletcher: “I slowly started to realise that it would be much more powerful if she doesn’t know that she’s evil.
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