Estelle Louise Fletcher, an American actress, best known for her portrayal of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) has died. She was born on July 22, 1934 and died September 23, 2022 at age 88.
Fletcher’s agent said she died at her home in France.
Fletcher set a new standard for screen villains when she played opposite Jack Nicholson in the 1975 movie, for which she would win the Academy Award for best actress, a BAFTA and a Golden Globe.
The actress made her professional debut in 1958, but was relatively unknown in Hollywood when she took on the role of Nurse Ratched – she was in her early 40s and had just returned to acting following an 11-year break to raise her two children.
Fletcher co-starred in TV movies such as;
- The Karen Carpenter Story (1989) (as Karen and Richard Carpenter’s mother, Agnes),
- Nightmare on the 13th Floor (1990),
- The Haunting of Seacliff Inn (1994), and
- The Stepford Husbands (1996).
From 1993 to 1999, she held a recurring role in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the scheming Bajoran religious leader Kai Winn Adami.
In 2009, Fletcher appeared in Heroes as the physician mother of character Emma Coolidge.
Two years later, she appeared in Shameless as Grammy Gallagher, Frank Gallagher’s foul-mouthed and hard-living mother who is serving a prison sentence for manslaughter related to a meth lab explosion.
She portrayed the recurring role of Rosie on the series Girlboss (2017).
