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Sissy Spacek Receives Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame

The Academy Award-winning actress was joined by actor Bill Paxton and director David Lynch at a star ceremony Monday.

Sissy Spacek received the 2,443rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Monday, honoring a career that has brought her a best actress Academy Award and five other nominations in that category.

Bill Paxton, star of the HBO drama Big Love in which Spacek appeared in six episodes in 2010, and director David Lynch, who worked with her on several films, joined Spacek in speaking in the late-morning ceremony in front of The El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.

"The first time I came to Hollywood, I walked around and found the Walk of Fame and the stars of my favorite celebrities,'' Spacek said. "I imagined what it would be like to have a star.''

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The ceremony came nine days before the release of Spacek's latest film, The Help.

Born Mary Elizabeth Spacek on Christmas Day 1949 in Quitman, Texas, and given the nickname Sissy by her older brothers, Spacek won a singer-songwriter contest when she was 17 and moved to New York City to pursue a singing career, living with her first cousin, actor Rip Torn, and his wife, actress Geraldine Page.

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Spacek sang and played guitar in Greenwich Village coffeehouses, sang commercial jingles and recorded a novelty song in late 1968 titled "John, You've Gone Too Far This Time," which proclaimed her disillusionment and shock over John Lennon appearing in full-frontal nudity with his then-girlfriend Yoko Ono on the cover of his album Two Virgins.

Spacek also worked as a photographic model and appeared in a non-credited role in Andy Warhol's 1970 film Trash. Spacek's first credited role was in the 1972 cult classic Prime Cut. She went on to appear in the made-for-television movie The Girls of Huntington House and two episodes of the CBS family drama The Waltons. Spacek's first high-profile film role was in the 1973 crime drama Badlands as the narrator and 15-year girlfriend of a mass murderer (Martin Sheen). She was nominated for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts' best female newcomer award but lost out to Georgina Hale.

Spacek received her first Academy Award nomination in 1977 for her portrayal of a shy, troubled high school senior with telekinetic powers in the horror film Carrie, but the award went to Faye Dunaway of Network. Spacek won an Oscar the next time she was nominated, in 1981, for her portrayal of country singer Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter. She also received a Grammy nomination for her singing on the film's soundtrack album. Spacek's other Academy Award nominations were for Missing (1982), The River (1984), Crimes of the Heart (1986), and In the Bedroom (2001). Spacek's other memorable films include Welcome to L.A. (1976), Three Women (1977), Raggedy Man (1981), JFK (1991) and Affliction (1998).

— City News Service


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