WHET Kate Nelligan?

She had an aloofness to her that probably prevented her from getting cast in a lot of roles, but I always liked that about her.

As a gayling in the early 80s I must have watched “Without A Trace” on HBO a dozen or so times. This promo is cheesy as hell but she was great in it.

She did three films with Michelle Pfeiffer (Frankie & Johnny, Wolf, Up Close & Personal) in the span of five years. I've always wondered if this was a coincidence or if they were friends.

Her IMDb says she schooled in the UK and was also a junior tennis champion.

My earliest memory of her was in Prince of Tides.

R1. I love you! I watched this on HBO along with Star Wars which they ran incessantly on HBO on 1983. This is when I first started drinking coffee.

^ Haha - yep I would cry like a baby at the end of “Without A Trace” every time too!

Kate was only in Wolf because the producers wouldn't let Mike Nichols cast cuckoo Mia Farrow.

My favourite performance was in Eye of the Needle (1981).

She apparently was sensational in Plenty on stage in London but the film role went to Meryl - as they all did and still do.

I saw Plenty, Kare was very, very good in the role. Liz Smith was a huge champion of Kate's, and mentioned her in her column often.

Kate's big showcase was in the film Eleni, which flopped, ending her leading lady chances. At the time Meryl really had first choice of virtually every dramatic part which may have come her way, i.e. Plenty.

R6 Nelligan was sensational in Plenty. It's one of my favorite plays, and I still think of her character and the meaning of Plenty. (Maybe David Hare's best too.) I'd love to know what happened to her. I'd like to think she moved on to some better form of living, away from the theater and film.

Loved her in Cujo

never got to see her onstage would love to.

Thanks guys!

She is/was fantastic

I loved her in Frankie and Johnny because she was cast completely against type as a brassy waitress who could also be sweet and warm.

IIRC Kate, Meryl and Dianne Wiest all shared the same powerful agent in the 1980s Sam Cohn of ICM, and in spite of Kate and Dianne fucking him, Meryl got all the great film roles.

Please correct me if I've got this wrong.

I loved her versatility. The first thing I saw her in was Dracula ('79), Eye Of The Needle then Without A Trace. It was cool seeing her play a blue collar waitress in Frankie & Johnny.

She was fantastic in "F&J" Truly memorable performance.

She was also great in [italic]Victims[/italic] (1982), an ABC TV movie in which she played the ringleader of a group of women who go vigilante on their rapist (Howard Hesseman) after he gets off on a technicality.

^OMG! I remember this! Thanks for reminding me.

I loved her in the 1979 mini series Therese Raquin with Alan Rickman. I saw on Masterpiece Theater.

Same here, OP! Used to watch Without a Trace and Mommie Dearest repeatedly on HBO. The ending to Without a Trace is fabulous and worth slogging through the overwrought middle of the film. I would always get goosebumps at the part when Det. Menetti pulls up to the crazy lady's house and see's the kidnapper's blue car.

I LOVE that film, R1. Watched it when it first aired, and saw it again last year. Holds up really well, and Kate was very good in it.

I get the aloofness you described, and I love it.

I was working at the Public during Plenty. We both lived on the upper west side so I would always see her on the platform after changing trains at 42nd Street to the N/R. Every day we would make eye contact and she would immediately look away - not even a nod or smile of recognition and I also saw her in the building a few times every day. I didn't much care but she was a snobby bitch.

The story going around at the time was that Joe Papp was pissed that the show had gone so far over budget he froze all spending. She had an outdoor scene and didn't yet have a coat. After the first dress rehearsal and the lights came up in the house, he turned to the production table and said "She gets the coat".

She's a great actress, OP. I saw her in An American Daughter onstage and she was absolutely fantastic. I personally thought she was great in Prince of Tides, too, but a number of folks would disagree. Hell, I even dug her in Dracula!

I feel like in the early 1980s she was competing with Meryl for the 'great actress' title and all the subsequent casting benefits that come with it that Meryl subsequently reaped for the rest of decade. Eleni put an end to that apparently.

Another Eldergay who saw Nelligan in Plenty (at the National in London). A *blazing* performance. And thanks for reminding me about Therese Raquin, R19. So good.

She got some of her best reviews for Michael Weller's play "Spoils of War", as well as her 4th Tony nomination (and last to date), but it closed after only a month in 1988. Also acclaimed for playing Virginia Woold in Edna O'Brien's play "Virginia" in 1985.

David Hare writes about their on-off affair in his memoir "The Blue Paper Touch Paper".

I never warmed to her after she told Rizzo to fuck off in Without A Trace

That hussy deserved it - sashaying into her apartment, swiping a Tab from the fridge without asking and then telling her it was time to move on 'cause her kid was probably dead.

*Woolf*

[quote] Liz Smith was a huge champion of Kate's, and mentioned her in her column often.

If you want to say that Kate preferred to date in Europe, then just say that Kate preferred to date in Europe.

It appears that she lives in Pennsylvania now. Her career really slowed down after turning 50, like many other actresses. Maybe she amassed enough money to retire instead of fighting for an ever decreasing amount of roles.

Her last IMDb credits were episodes of Law and Order: SVU. Do you think she scissored with Oleebia?

LOL r27/r28! I actually looked for that scene on YouTube to post here. It’s the first thing to come to my mind whenever I think of that movie…or Kate Nelligan for that matter. Including the Tab!!!

I’ve often wondered in my head if Stockard’s character ever came around to see her again after what happens at the end of the movie (which I don’t want to give away for those who might seek it out - and they should!). Or was she like “Fuck you forever, bitch!”

I enjoyed [italic]Wolf[/italic], including her performance. It also has David Hyde Pierce in a supporting role.

A lot of people think she’s British buf she’s actually Canadian.

I used to see her on the UWS all the time a few years ago. I wonder if she moved down to Pennsylvania when Covid hit.

I also loved her in Without a Trace. Great scene in a coffee shop with the late, lovely David Dukes. Her character talks in this very touching, small voice, obviously feeling snowed under by her predicament.

Yeah, taking the role of Eleni was probably a big mistake but the book had been a best seller.

I wonder if Ryan Murphy has reached out to her. I like to think he did, and she told him ‘no fucking way!’

Hare should write a sequel for Kate's big comeback, "Plenty More!"

R31 some women over 50 are a profit-making draw, but Kate never made a movie studio money--and Broadway isn't terribly lucrative. I'm sure she could have gotten more independent roles or TV guest work had she wanted.

Surely she could great work if she was interested in any number of the those streaming mini-series constantly being churned out, many even from Canada, her home country.

Maybe she can be in Season 2 of The Gilded Age.

there is a film version of Spoils of War with Kate and John Heard. Eye of the Needle has one of Donald Sutherland's campy performances and their sex scene is rather awkward but Kate does a great scream when she finds her husband dead.

Thanks, I didn't realize "Spoils of War" had been filmed.

It was made for TV.

trailer for eye of the needle.

Hopefully nothing, career-wise.

I hate her...SO MUCH, it...it...it...flames...flames, on the sides of my face, breathing...breathless...heaping breaths... heaping...

I also was around for her storied run in Plenty, of course I was.

I watched Without a Trace and Mommie Dearest on a loop on HBO. I’d be like “Mom, it’s Rizzo!”

R27 - she didn't actually tell her to fuck off. she just said to go to hell because she was angry. I think their relationship could have been mended.

‘Nelligan’ just sounds like the descriptor of a queen in a pashmina at the end of the bar drinking a brandy alexander.

She's a mystery.

I Google her every once in a blue moon but after having read this thread it seems like she retired. I'll just Google to see if she's perhaps doing a play or something but it seems like she called things a day after two episodes of "Law and Order SVU"

R31 How'd you learn that she lives over in Pennsylvania? Did she join the Amish?

Lady's a mystery I tell 'ya.

Great voice on her. She knows just what to do with it really well.

Kate and Faye Dunaway should play sisters.

Good heavens! I never noticed the resemblance until now.

I remember laughing out loud when I read an interview with her and she said re: Plenty “I’ll never get over hearing a couple at Sardi’s discussing the play and the wife said ‘But what’s her PROBLEM?’ in a thick Noo Yawk accent.”

fucking Sam Cohn might not have done much for Dianne Wiest, R10, but fucking Woody Allen got her two Oscars. She was never going to be a leading lady.