Oscar Profile #376: Lois Smith

Born November 3, 1930 in Topeka, Kansas, Lois Arlene Humbert was the youngest of six children of a telephone worker and his wife. She grew up performing in church plays put on by her father. At 18, she married fellow actor Wesley Dale Smith, becoming Lois Smith, the actress we know and love today.

Smith made her Broadway debut in 1952 in Time Out for Ginger, her TV debut in 1953 in an episode of Kraft Television Theatre and her film debut in 1955’s East of Eden. She has been seen steadily in the theatre, on TV and on film ever since. She gave birth to her only child, a daughter, in 1958 after nine years of marriage.

Mostly on stage and TV between her 1955 film debut and 1970, the year she divorced her husband, Smith’s portrayal of Jack Nicholson’s sister in 1970’s Five Easy Pieces, for which she won a Best Supporting Actress award from the National Society of Film Critics re-introduced her to cinema audiences in a big way. Subsequent 1970s films include Up the Sandbox and Next Stop, Greenwich Village.

The 1980s saw her in such films as Foxes, Resurrection, Four Friends, Reuben, Reuben, Reckless, Black Widow, Fatal Attraction and Midnight Run. In the 1990s, Smith earned Tony nominations for her Broadway roles as Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath and Halie in Buried Child. On screen, she was in Green Card, Fried Green Tomatoes, Falling Down, Holy Matrimony, How to Make an American Quilt, Dead Man Walking, Twister and Tumbleweeds. Her numerous TV credits within the decade included Truman, as Bess Truman’s mother. How to Make an American Quilt earned her the first of two Screen Actors Guild nominations to date for a cast nomination.

The first decade of the new century found Smith in such films as The Pledge, Minority Report and Hollywoodland. On Broadway, she earned a Drama Desk award as Best Actress for The Trip to Bountiful. On TV, her many appearances included her recurring role as Anna Paquin’s grandmother in True Blood which introduced her to younger audiences.

The current decade found her in such films as Please Give, Roadie, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, Run All Night, The Nice Guys, The Comedian and more recently, Marjorie Prime which has earned her numerous awards recognition and Lady Bird for which she was nominated for the second time by the Screen Actors Guild for a cast nomination. In-between, she earned a Broadcast Critics’ nomination for her role in a 2015 episode of the TV series, The Americans.

Marjorie Prime is probably the closest Smith has ever come to an Oscar nomination, but it wasn’t to be. Undeterred, the 87-year-old ever-busy actress will be heard, but not seen, in The Gettysburg Address, now in post-production.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

EAST OF EDEN (1955), directed by Elia Kazan

Smith made her Broadway debut in 1952, her TV debut in 1953 and in 1954 made this, her first film, released in early 1955. Long renown as the film in which James Dean had his first starring role, it was also the widely heralded debut film of Richard Davalos as his brother, Jo Van Fleet in her Oscar-winning role as his mother as well as Smith in a poignant portrayal of a young waitress trapped in Van Fleet’s bordello. Her scene with Dean is heartbreaking. As terrific as she was, it’s a shame it took fifteen years before she had another big screen role as good, although audiences could still see her in interesting roles on stage and TV in the interim.

FIVE EASY PIECES (1970), directed by Bob Rafelson

One of the first great films of the 1970s, Five Easy Pieces started out awards season well, earning New York Film Critics Circle awards for Best Film, Director and Supporting Actress, Karen Black as Jack Nicolson’s put-upon girlfriend. Nicholson was runner-up to George C. Scott in Patton for Best Actor and Smith was runner-up to Black for Supporting Actress as Nicholon’s concert pianist sister. She then won the National Society of Film Critics award over Black. Although the film would be nominated for four Oscars including those for Nicholson and Black, Smith was not nominated.

TWISTER (1996), directed by Jan de Bont

It took another twenty-six years for Smith to be given as memorable a big screen role as she had in East of Eden and Five Easy Pieces, this time stealing all the scenes the special effects didn’t. As scientist Helen Hunt’s aunt, she keeps Hunt, Bill Paxton and others on their team fed between their storm chasing in this film from Speed director Jan de Bont. His second most famous film, it was nominated for Oscars for its Sound and Special Visual Effects. Smith’s next bravura performance would be on TV as Anna Paquin’s grandmother in True Blood eight years later.

MARJORIE PRIME (2017), directed by Michael Almereyda

Smith was given a lifetime achievement award from the Las Vegas Film Critics Society, largely based on her performance here, itself nominated for Best Actress at the Gotham Awards and Best Supporting Actress at the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Satellite Awards. Considered a long shot for an Oscar nomination, she again failed to make the cut for one of her most intriguing performances. Smith plays an elderly woman in the not-too-distant future who orders a hologram of long dead husband, Jon Hamm, as he was in his prime. She then plays the old lady as a hologram ordered by her daughter, Geena Davis, after her death.

LADY BIRD (2017), directed by Greta Gerwig

Smith was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award as part of the cast of this critically acclaimed coming-of-age film is based on writer-director Gerwig’s origins in Sacramento, California. Although star Saoirse Ronan and co-star Laurie Metcalf as the teenage protagonist and her mother have been the only players singled out for their performances by the various awards giving entities, the film has also been highly praised for the supporting performances of Tracy Letts as Ronan’s father, Lucas Hedges and Timothée Chalamet her first boyfriends and Smith as a wise old nun who is not fooled by Ronan’s devil-may-care attitude.