Why did Madeleine Stowe not have a bigger career in Hollywood?

got old, wasn't a a character actress who could transform to other types, career was too looks based

I thought she dropped out of the industry to raise a family or something?

Anyway, when Ray Liotta died I mentioned my love for Unlawful Entry. Great movie and the film that comes to mind when I think of Madeleine Stowe.

She was cold, an accessory when you need the male lead to have no competition

R3 That coldness served her well in her career best as Victoria Grayson in ABC's Revenge.

I ain't ever heard of her, that's probably you answer right there.

I loved Stowe at her early to mid '90s peak. In Blink (the thriller in which she's a blind musician whose sight is restored, and she starts having visions of murders) she even demonstrated she could carry a film. She's complex and interesting in that part. But it seemed she never really broke through with the public, and a window closed. Sometimes that happens.

She was originally offered the role of Matthew Modine's wife in Robert Altman's Short Cuts, but she was uncomfortable with the full frontal nudity. Not in and of itself but because she thought she would be too self-conscious playing that long marital argument while "bottomless." Altman told her not to worry about it, and he got Julianne Moore for the part. (Moore told him, "I have a bonus for you, Bob. I'm a real redhead.") But he kept Stowe on the project, giving her the role of Tim Robbins's wife. It turned out to be one of her best and most enduring films. The scene in which Robbins, a Los Angeles cop, makes up an overly complicated lie to hide his cheating, and Stowe bursts out laughing, is a high point of the film.

Probabky she didn't suck Harvey Weinstein's deformed, mutilated dong?

Julia Ormond is another actress from that era who fizzled out. She had a similar career trajectory as Madeleine with an epic period film in Legends of the Fall and working with Brad Pitt.

I remember her from the movie Revenge with Kevin Costner. Wow that character went through some hell. She’s given a Glasgow smile by some gangsters then kidnapped and thrown in a brothel where her only chance of escape from being forced to sleep with 50 men a day is to be infected with AIDS by some sympathetic guy working at the brothel. One of the bleakest movies ever.

R8 Stowe’s career as a leading lady in studio films was much longer; Ormond’s lasted a couple years. Stowe’s was from Stakeout (1987) to We Were Soldiers (2002). Not really a similar career trajectory.

She did a lot of "The Girl" roles in her day, ev E Ryan zctress who does that fizzles out at a comparatively young age.

She was good in those roles because she was good at looking lovely and vulnerable, but IMHO she lacked the spark needed to carry films. No spark, no star quality, no sense of fun, and what might have been a lack of sex appeal. Obviously I'm no expert there, who among us is.

Ormond also got more of an aggressive stardom push, which turned people off. But I did think she had become better when she was older, as the mother of the useless Megan character on Mad Men.

As is often the case, I’m sure it was her choice. She has a family, a long marriage to Brian Benben (of Dream On fame). I’m sure she’s still in demand when she wants to work.

I saw her years ago on Fallon's old late night show and she was a total kook. She made some weird comment to Jimmy about loving the smell of his sweat...I don't think she has mainstream appeal.

R13 I don’t know why people push this kind of narrative. Actors don’t get into high profile movies and TV shows “by accident.” They get there because they’re fucking ambitious as all hell.

She was great in"Octane" (aka "Pulse"), where she played an ex-addict whose teen daughter (played by Mischa Barton) gets abducted by a band of hippie vampire freaks on a nighttime road trip. Jonathan Rhys Meyers played the cult leader, and Norman Reedus a trucker trying to hunt them down. I don't think anyone (aside from myself and maybe ten other people) ever saw it, but I thought it was a weird, memorable, and creepy flick, and Stowe was really good in it. Her aloofness worked well for the damaged character she was playing. I think it was the last film she's been in to date.

Wasn't she in the Chinatown sequel with Jack Nicholson?

I liked her but she lacked range.

It was that whacky Xenu what did it!

12 Monkeys

In the 90s, my friend and I always referred to her as “the wooden Madelyn Stowe.” So I guess we thought she was a clunky actor.

I do remember thinking they should give cast a much “earthier” actor as the cop’s wife in “Short Cuts.”

Should HAVE cast

She had a nice second act with ABC's REVENGE. I was surprised that it didn't propel her forward.

She was a limited actress at best and probably wouldn't to the couching coach shit.

She wrote a script in the early 00's that the studios were all very interesting in but they wouldn't yield to her demand to start in it and direct it.

It was a Western and apparently very very good. She was attached to direct it at one time starring Hugh Jackman but nothing has come with it. We may have missed out on an interesting film.

Now of course she would be too old to star in her script but it is a shame that nobody is giving her the chance to direct it given its supposed quality.

[quote]I do remember thinking they should have cast a much “earthier” actor as the cop’s wife in “Short Cuts.”

My read was that Stowe's character had married down. She and Julianne Moore play sisters, and Moore is an artist married to a doctor; she goes to chamber music recitals and wears fashionable-for-1993 clothes. When we see Stowe at Moore/Modine's house posing for the painting, it seems she's more in an environment where she fits. But now she's married to this motorcycle cop and has a couple of brats running around their little tract house.

The Robbins character probably got her to believe he was going to make detective and rise high in the ranks or some shit. His talent seems to be getting women to believe his bullshit for a while.

Like too many actresses, when she got older (not even that old really) she had terrible plastic surgery that of course didn't make her look younger, but instead all fucked up. I remember watching WE WERE SOLDIERS and finding her unrecognizable.

I always got her confused with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.

I used to get her confused with Andie McDowell.

Julia Ormand, Madeleine Stow and M.E.M. are the same person.

Stowe famously wrote a screenplay for a Western that was the hottest script in town. She had Russell Crowe attached and a studio offering her $10 million—if she agreed NOT to play the female lead. Stowe balked and the movie never got made. This was after her film career essentially ended (General’s Daughter, Impostor) but before her TV comeback on Revenge.

Does the same person keep posting these “why didn’t xxx have ….”

Tedious

I kind of admire her for just saying no to the studio's wishes and walking. I wish we could have seen that movie, because I remember reading about it years ago in Premiere or something, but I wonder if most women would have given in just to get the movie made.

She was "difficult"

Her hubby has a major gayface.

How’d he get a fox like Stowe?

I think that's what I'm saying, R13. It requires more ambition, drive and effort than she chooses to devote to it. Thus, the career that she has.

I liked her in "The Flying Nun" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", but that forehead of hers was a little much.

I always found her voice quite grating. I think that's a reason why the straight male audience never really went for her.

r21 Do you think she and McDormand (who plays the mistress) should've switched roles? I think Robbins in that role is why I've never really liked him.

r25 Then she ultimately just puts up with his cheating in the end. Really a very cynical, nihilistic movie overall.

I heard someone that Moore regrets that long bush scene in Short Cuts and only did it as a favor to Altman.

I've heard stories about Robert Altman being a shyster as well as having issues with women. Both very common in Hollywood - especially pre-Boomers.

Bland, really bland

I think she's had the career she wanted tbh. She was still able to land in hot properties after the gaps in between her biggest roles. I've always enjoyed her work, you can tell that there's always something percolating underneath the surface when she 's in a scene. She should have played more villainess parts.