Louise Fletcher, an American actress whose riveting performance as the cruel and calculating Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, has died.
The 88-year-old died at her home in southern France and is survived by two sons, entertainment publications Variety and Deadline reported, citing her representatives.
While she was best known for her portrayal of Ratched, Fletcher had an acting career that spanned more than six decades, including numerous appearances in television shows.
She had a recurring role on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” and garnered Emmy nominations for guest-starring roles on “Picket Fences” and “Joan of Arcadia” in 1996 and 2004 respectively.
Born in 1934 in Birmingham, Alabama to hearing-impaired parents, Fletcher was hampered by her age in finding major roles in Hollywood.

Still, she worked continuously for most of the rest of her life.
Her post-“Cuckoo’s Nest” films included “Mama Dracula,” “Dead Kids” and “The Boy Who Could Fly.”
Fletcher used sign language to thank her hearing-impaired parents for their support during her Oscar acceptance speech in 1976.
She was nominated for Emmys for her guest roles on the TV series “Joan of Arcadia” and “Picket Fences,” and had a recurring role as Bajoran religious leader Kai Winn Adami in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”
She played the mother of musical duo Carpenters in 1989′s “The Karen Carpenter Story.”
Fletcher’s career was also hampered by her height.
At 5-feet-10, she would often be dismissed from an audition immediately because she was taller than her leading man.
After putting her career on hold for years to raise her children, Fletcher was in her early 40s and little known when chosen for the role opposite Jack Nicholson in the 1975 film by director Milos Forman, who had admired her work the year before in director Robert Altman’s “Thieves Like Us.”
At the time, she didn’t know that many other prominent stars, including Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn and Angela Lansbury, had turned it down.
“I was the last person cast,” she recalled in a 2004 interview.
“It wasn’t until we were halfway through shooting that I realized the part had been offered to other actresses who didn’t want to appear so horrible on the screen.”
Her last credited work was a two-episode run guest-starring on the Netflix show “Girlboss” in 2017, according to IMDb.com.
AFP