In Remembrance: Carrie Snodgress

     Oscar nominated actress Carrie Snodgress died April 1, 2004 of heart failure. She was 57 years old.

     Born October 27, 1946 in Park Ridge, Illinois, Snodgress switched to drama at Chicago's Goodman Theatre School where she won the Sarah Siddons Award as outstanding graduate.

     Snodgress made her big-screen debut in an uncredited role in 1968’s Easy Rider. She received a Best Actress Oscar nomination and also won the Golden Globe for her role as Tina Balser, the "good" wife driven to adultery, in her second feature film, Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970). But, Snodgress left Hollywood just as she was reaching stardom to live with Neil Young. She returned to the screen in 1978, playing the girlfriend of Kirk Douglas in Brian DePalma’s sci-fi/thriller The Fury (1978).

     Through the 80’s she appeared in low-budget films, including 1982’s flat teen sex comedy Homework. Her most memorable roles of the decade were in Pale Rider as Clint Eastwood’s frontier wife and as the villainess in 1986’s Murphy’s Law opposite Charles Bronson. 

     Sadly, Snodgress didn’t appear in much past the mid 1980’s. In 1994, audiences saw her in the release of the long awaited, yet critically acclaimed, Blue Sky, which garnered Jessica Lange an Oscar. She was also in the rodeo bio-pic drama, 8 Seconds, playing Luke Perry’s mother. One of her last roles for the big screen was in the trashy 1998 thriller, Wild Things co-starring Matt Dillon and Neve Campbell. 

     When Snodgress wasn’t in Hollywood film, she acted on the small screen appearing in Quincy, ER, The X-Files and The West Wing. She also appeared in a few TV movies, including The Impatient Heart (1971), A Reason To Live (1985), and Woman with a Past (1992).

     Snodgress’s last acting appearance was earlier this year in HBO’s Iron Jawed Angels.

-John Gibbon