Oscar Profile #148: Anjelica Huston

Born July 6, 1951 in Santa Monica, California to John Huston and his fourth wife, Italian-American prima ballerina Ricki Soma while her father was in Africa directing The African Queen, Anjelica Huston spent most of her childhood in England and Ireland 1969, the year of her mother’s death in a car accident at the age of 39.

Huston made her film debut as a hand model subbing for Deborah Kerr’s hands in 1967’s Casino Royale co-directed by her father. She had her first major screen role as a 16 year-old noblewoman in her father’s 1969’s film, A Walk With Love and Death. The film was not successful either critically or commercially and she turned to modeling full time. She began a 16 year relationship with Jack Nicholson in 1973 that lasted until 1989 while maintaining a separate residence in Venice, California. Back into acting, she had a handful of small roles before her father cast her as Nicholson’s discarded mistress in 1985’s Prizzi’s Honor. The role won her a slew of awards including a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

The actress received top billing in her father’s last film, the beautifully realized 1987 film of James Joyce’s The Dead, an ensemble piece that further advanced her career . She had five of her best roles in 1989 and 1990 as the presumed dead wife of Ron Silver in Enemies: A Love Story; Martin Landau’s mistress in Crimes and Misdemeanors; Robert Duvall’s kind-hearted former lover in TV’s Lonesome Dove; the Grand High Witch in The Witches and John Cusack’s con artist mother in The Grifters earning awards recognition for all of them including Oscar nominations for Enemies: A love Story and The Grifters.

Huston had tremendous success with 1991’s The Addams Family and its 1994 sequel, Addams Family Values. In between she had a major supporting role in Woody Allen’s Manhattan Murder Mystery and TV’s And the Band Played On. She received some of the best notices of her career for her portrayal of the mother of a hit-and-run victim in Sean Penn’s 1995 film, The Crossing Guard.

She was a standout as the wicked stepmother in 1998’s Ever After: A Cinderella Story; the widow with seven children in 1999’s Agnes Browne which she herself directed; the estranged wife and mother in 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums and yet another estranged wife in 2004’s The Life Acquatic of Steve Zissou.

She had a continuing role in TV’s Medium in 2008 and 2009 and her best big screen role in years as Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s mother in 2011’s 50/50.

The now veteran star had her most substantial role in any medium in some years as the theatrical producer in the 2011-2013 TV series, Smash which was sadly not renewed for a third season.

Married to sculptor Robert Graham from 1992 to his death in 2008, Huston, an avid reader, still resides in the same home she has owned in Venice, California since the 1970s.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

PRIZZI’S HONOR (1985), directed by John Huston

After years in the shadows of her famous father and long-time lover (Jack Nicholson), Anjelica Huston finally stepped out of the shadows of both to give an amazing Oscar winning performance as the malevolent Maerose Prizzi in a film directed by her father and starring her on and off lover. In so doing she became the first third generation Oscar winner after grandfather Walter and father John, both of whom won for 1948’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

While it looked for a while that father and daughter would repeat the wins of father and son thirty-seven earlier, that was not to be although the senior Huston was himself nominated.

THE DEAD (1987), directed by John Huston

Taken from a short story in James Joyce’s The Dubliners, this exquisite film with an Oscar nominated screenplay by Tony Huston, Anjelica’s older brother and the last directed by her father, takes place in a snowy Dublin during the 1904 holiday season.

Anjelica Huston heads the cast as a seemingly happily married woman who attends a family party with her husband where she hears a young tenor singing a song that was once performed by a boy she loved. The look on her face as she remembers the boy while listening to the song, tells her husband (Donal McCann) that she could never love him as much as she loved that boy all those years ago. McCann recites the poem that ended the short story while looking out the window as snow falls gently all over Ireland on the living and the dead.

THE GRIFTERS (1990), directed by Stephen Frears

Anjelica Huston, John Cusack and Annette Bening all deliver stellar Oscar nominated performances as petty swindlers working with and against one another in this one-of-a-kind classic for which Huston received numerous Best Actress awards including those of the Boston Film Critics, L.A. Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics as well as runner-up to Joanne Woodward in the New York Film Critics voting for Mr. & Mrs. Bridge.

Huston’s final confrontation with Cusak is one of the screen’s most unforgettable sequences.

50/50 (2011), directed by Jonathan Levine

Anjelica Huston’s great comic timing is on fine display here as Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s over-protective mother in this based on real life story of a young man who is given a 50/50 chance of surviving cancer.

Although Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen and Anna Kendrick are all quite wonderful in their respective roles, Huston’s presence lends gravitas to this wonderful film.

SMASH (2012/2013), created by Theresa Rebeck

Based on a novel by Garson Kanin, the first season of this Steven Spielberg produced series featured Anjelica Huston as a recently divorced first-time producer behind a Broadway bound musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. In the second season, the show has reached Broadway and Huston’s character mounts a campaign to win the Tony. Featuring a bevy of famed Broadway stars in cameos, the main roles, in addition to Huston’s, are filled out by Megan Hilty and Katharine McPhee as competing rising stars; Debra Messing and Christian Borle as veteran composers; Jack Davenport as a famed director and joining them in the second season, Jeremy Jordan and Andy Mientus as an aspiring composer and his friend and book writer.

The series deserved a better fate than it got.