HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 09: Kathy Bates attends the 92nd Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood and Highland on February 09, 2020 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)AMY SUSSMAN 

‘It was cruel, unnecessarily cruel’: How Kathy Bates became an unlikely star

She was over 40 and had a physique that was not normative for Hollywood, but her Oscar for ‘Misery’ led her to become one of the busiest actresses in Hollywood

EVA GÜIMIL

JUN 29, 2024 - 23:05 COT

When Daniel Day-Lewis read the name of Kathy Bates, rhere was some surprise in the Shrine Civic Auditorium. In the 1990 race to win the Oscar for Best Actress, she was up against Hollywood royalty (Anjelica Huston and Joanne Woodward), Academy favorite (Meryl Streep), and America’s new sweetheart (Julia Roberts). The press were not counting on her winning. At age 40, Bates was a virtual unknown. What’s more, she was nominated for playing a villain in a horror movie. Four decades later, her performance Annie Wilkes in Misery has become iconic, and there are no doubts that it was deserving of an Oscar.

Interview: Kathy Bates

The Oscar winner opens up about the early struggles of pursuing an acting career, her breakthrough role in Misery and lessons learned from being a two-time cancer survivor

Reader's Digest
3 March 2020

“I’m your number one fan. There’s nothing to worry about. I will take good care of you.” The image of Annie Wilkes’ stern, catatonic-like face hovering obsessively over the bedridden Paul Sheldon is an iconic one for any horror movie fan. In Misery, Kathy Bates brought to life one of cinema’s most terrifying female villains: the cunning, psychopathic nurse who traps and tortures her beloved author after he gets into a car accident.

‘I’m over never being the romantic lead’ … Bates. Photograph: Philip Cheung/The Guardian

Interview

Kathy Bates: 'I told Clint that after 50 years, I feel like I've hit the big time'

This article is more than 4 years old

With her fourth nomination for an Oscar, Kathy Bates talks about overcoming brutal criticism about her looks, her pride at playing real women and why she loved working with Clint Eastwood

John Patterson
Friiday 17 January 2020

‘Oh, I’m a bumper!” says Kathy Bates as I reach out to shake her hand. A small fist comes towards me with a large, round, pink-rose ring on the middle finger. We bump and laugh and one of the truly unique American acting powerhouses of the past half-century beams back at me. She has a splendid smile, full of mischief and wisdom: a small and compact woman buoyed by that straight-up, unfeigned southern warmth that abides no matter where you encounter it. She fusses over me kindly, offering drinks – a world away from the nervous, shy, deeply rattled and easily hurt woman I have just watched in Clint Eastwood’s new movie, Richard Jewell.

 

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New Again: Kathy Bates

By Michael Lassell

Photographed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

July 20, 2016

Few actors possess a range like Kathy Bates.  She can play a murderous, obsessive literary fan (Misery), a stubborn, bayou-bound matriarch (The Waterboy), and just about everything in between, be it drama or comedy, film or television. With an Oscar and two Emmys to her name, at age 68, she continues to take on lauded roles. Just last week, Bates received her 14th Emmy nomination for her role in FX’s anthology series American Horror Story. If that isn’t enough, Deadline also announced that she’ll be starring in Disjointed, a new Netflix comedy series about a longtime advocate for marijuana legalization who opens her own pot dispensary.

Biographies / Kathy Bates

 

Kathy Bates

Kathy Bates 

Biography

(1948)

The youngest of three daughters, Kathleen Doyle Bates was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to a homemaker and a mechanical engineer on June 28, 1948. After getting into acting via a high school play, Kathy went on to major in theatre at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1969.