Louise Fletcher

Estelle Louise Fletcher (born July 22, 1934) is an American actress. She initially debuted in the television series Yancy Derringer in 1958. Also in 1959 she played a young mother on the TV series Wagon Train in, "The Andrew Hale Story", before being cast in Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us (1974). The following year, Fletcher gained international recognition for her performance as Nurse Ratched in the 1975 film One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. She became only the third actress to win an Academy Award, BAFTA Award and Golden Globe Award for a single performance, after Audrey Hepburn and Liza Minnelli. Other notable film roles include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), Brainstorm (1983), Firestarter (1984), Flowers in the Attic (1987), 2 Days in the Valley (1996), and Cruel Intentions (1999). Later into her career, Fletcher returned to television, appearing as Vedek and later Kai Winn Adami in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, as well as receiving Emmy nominations for her guest-starring roles in Picket Fences and Joan of Arcadia. Most recently, Fletcher has appeared in a recurring role on the Showtime television series Shameless in 2011 and 2012, as Frank Gallagher's foul-mouthed and hard-living mother who is serving a prison sentence for manslaughter.