“When I look beyond Faye Dunaway now, I can see a brown-haired, barefoot girl standing in the middle of a dirt road that runs through a small southern town,” Dunaway writes in Looking for Gatsby, her 1995 autobiography.
This quaint image seems worlds away from the sophisticated, broodingly electric star of legendary films like Bonnie and Clyde, The Thomas Crown Affair, Network, and Three Days of the Condor. She has long been a subject of fascination; this month, she’s also appearing in a new documentary, Faye, where she opens up about her struggles and bipolar disorder.
Gossip about Dunaway’s erratic nature has floated around Hollywood for decades, with the equally formidable Bette Davis once referring to her as “the most impossible star I’ve ever worked with.” While Dunaway refutes Davis’s allegations with a mixture of understanding, snark, and pity, Looking for Gatsby makes clear that its writer does have quite the flair for drama.
While Dunaway’s deadly serious musings can be pretentious (talk about “the work” of acting feels like it takes up over half of the book), her writing reveals her to be an admittedly fearful perfectionist, an intellectual loner who feels too deeply. She frequently recounts getting compliments about her work from everyone from Tennessee Williams to Debra Winger, and has kind words for many of her peers in the industry: Sharon Stone, David Niven, Jane Fonda, and Dick Van Dyke. Dunaway is at her most touchingly human when she’s discussing relationships with her family, lovers, and son, Liam. All too often, though, she falls back into artistic contemplation.
“I never thought of being anything but the best, no matter how long it took to achieve it,” Dunaway writes. “The deal my mother made with me was that if I tried hard enough and worked hard enough, I would achieve my dreams. And I have.”
Lord Lift My Baby High
“On January 14, 1941,” Dunaway writes in Looking for Gatsby, “I decided to make my entry, three months early. I’ve been told since that Capricorns are always a bit impatient with the pace of the rest of the world, and I can’t say I disagree.”
Only 4 pounds at birth, Dorothy Faye Dunaway was born in Bascom, Florida, to John, a young farmhand, and Grace, a beautiful redhead. Although times were hard, Dunaway tenderheartedly recalls the fun she and her brother Mac had with their extended kin. “It was a lively, horse playing southern family,” she writes.
Grace threw all her energy into turning the clever Faye into a cultured, southern lady who could marry well and escape the poverty that plagued her family. But little Faye, who admits to already being “little but ruthless,” had grander ambitions. When she was only five, she whispered them into her beloved grandmother’s ear, “I’m going to be an actress. But don’t tell mother.”