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A certain star who made her big break in Hollywood in the 1970s with an iconic horror movie role looked VERY different in high school.
The American A-lister has taken home an Academy Award for Best Actress and five other Oscar nominations during her career.
She also won three Golden Globes and even received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.
The actress has starred in films alongside Hollywood royalty including Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, John Travolta, Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange and Tommy Lee Jones.
Her breakout role was in the original screenplay of a Stephen King novel, which was remade in 2013 and starred Chloë Grace Moretz in the same role.
A certain star who made her big break in Hollywood in the 1970s looked VERY different as Homecoming Queen in high school
The A-lister – born and raised in Texas – has taken home an Academy Award for Best Actress and five other Oscar nominations during her career
Mary Elizabeth Spacek – better known as Sissy Spacek – is the Hollwood star who underwent a MAJOR transformation before entering the showbiz scene.
Spacek, 73, is best known for her role in the 1976 film adaptation of Stephen King’s supernatural horror “Carrie,” but she’s had an impressive and lengthy stint in Hollywood, and it’s not over yet.
She was born in Quitman, Texas, on Christmas Day in 1949 and grew up nearby with her parents and brothers – who nicknamed her Sissy.
The actress was deeply affected by the tragic death of her brother Robbie at the age of 18 from leukemia – even calling it “the defining event of my entire life”, but she said the tragedy made her “fearless” in her acting career.
‘I think it made me brave. Once you experience something like that, you have experienced the ultimate tragedy,” she said. ‘If you can continue, you are no longer afraid of anything.
‘Maybe it gave more depth to my work because I had already experienced something profound and life-changing.’
After a stint as homecoming queen at Quitman High School, followed by graduation, the Texas native picked up the thread and headed to New York City to pursue her dreams of becoming a singer-songwriter.
Mary Elizabeth Spacek – better known as Sissy Spacek – is the Hollwood star who underwent a MAJOR transformation before entering the showbiz scene
Spacek showed up to her Carrie audition with Vaseline in her hair and wearing a sailor dress that her mother made when she was a child
Between returning home and her dip in the entertainment pool, Spacek underwent a complete physical transformation.
In the photo from her yearbook, a teenage Sissy poses with her homecoming crown and wears heavy eye makeup, rocks a bob with bangs and shows off a sweet smile with her full straight teeth.
Spacek’s performance as Carrie received critical acclaim and earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress
Upon arrival in New York City – she had maintained her cute appearance – with natural freckles, no makeup, strawberry blonde hair and a slim face, as well as a nose that appears much smaller.
She was dropped by her music label when sales of the music she recorded in the late 1960s crashed.
During her comeback, she first appeared on the big screen in Prime Cut, a 1972 film directed by Michael Ritchie and starring Lee Marvin. Spacek played the role of Poppy, a girl sold into sexual slavery.
Her breakthrough role was in Terrence Malick’s 1973 crime drama Badlands starring Spacek and Martin Sheen, a role she described as the “most incredible” experience of her career.
Next came her most prominent early role in Carrie – a role for which she had to beg the director, Brian De Palma, to cast her.
She showed up to the audition with Vaseline in her hair and wearing a sailor dress that her mother made when she was a child, and her determination and dedication to the role paid off.
Her performance as Carrie received critical acclaim and earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
Spacek went on to win an Academy Award for Best Actress in the 1980 film Coal Miner’s Daughter for her portrayal of country star Loretta Lynn.
Sissy Spacek’s comparison from her high school days to her big screen days shows how her nose seemed to become much narrower
The New Yorker published a review of her “Carrie” by Pauline Kael, who said, “She shifts back and forth and sideways: a nasal, whiny child; a chaste young beauty at the ball; and then a second transformation when her destructive impulses erupt and age her.
‘Sissy Spacek uses her freckled pallor and whitish eyelashes to suggest a squashed, dizzy girl who could go either way; sometimes she seems unborn, a foetus.’
Spacek married production designer and art director Jack Fisk in 1974 after meeting him on the set of Badlands
Spacek went on to win an Academy Award for Best Actress in the 1980 film Coal Miner’s Daughter for her portrayal of country star Loretta Lynn – and she sang her character’s vocals herself.
Two years later, she gave birth to her first daughter with production designer and art director Jack Fisk – whom she married in 1974 after the couple met on the set of Badlands.
The couple had two daughters: Schuyler Fisk, 41, and Madison Fisk, 35. Both girls went into the entertainment industry themselves, Schuyler as a musician and Madison as a production designer.
Spacek said her daughters “brought her back to earth” at a time when her “career was skyrocketing.”
The family moved to a farm near Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1982. Spacek said, “I wanted to give my children roots. Let them grow up with animals and dirt between their toes.’
In 2020, she released a memoir – My Extraordinary Ordinary Life. The book is divided into four parts: Texas, New York, California and Virginia, each representing a phase in her life.
Spacek said her two daughters ‘brought her back to earth’ at a time when her ‘career was skyrocketing’
The family moved to a farm near Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1982. Spacek said, “I wanted to give my children roots. Let them grow up with animals and dirt between their toes’
Spacek collaborated with Harvey Weinstein in 1990 on a film about the Montgomery bus boycott.
In an interview with the Irish times she said she was fortunate enough to work mostly with friends — and often with her art director husband — who protected her from the abusive side of Hollywood.
“I was already an established actor, so that way I was protected from him. Plus, I was warned by someone I was close to who said be careful, and so I was,” she said when asked about Weinstein.
“He did some things that I thought were very distasteful, but they weren’t sexual,” she said of her experiences with the film producer and convicted sex offender.