TMS Muse of the Week: Nancy Allen
(United Artists / MGM Pictures)
Two weeks ago, I focused on Italian icons Michelangelo Antonioni & Monica Vitti’s artist-muse history. This week I’m putting the spotlight on a couple I’ve always considered the Hollywood equivalent of this pairing: Brian De Palma & Nancy Allen. He was a part of the New Hollywood movement in the late 1960s to early 1970s, she was a dancer-turned-model who quickly realized she would rather take acting lessons. Though Nancy’s first acting job was a small, but memorable, role in Hal Ashby’s classic drama The Last Detail (1973); she wasn’t on most movie fans’ radar until three years later when she was cast as the meanest girl on campus in Brian’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie (1976). Many naturally assume they began their relationship during the production of the iconic horror flick. But according to another Carrie actress, P.J. Soles, Brian actually asked her out first during filming, which she passed on. Nancy says it was a few months later, during the film’s press tour, when she and Brian decided to give dating a go, which eventually led to them marrying in 1979.
Throughout the marriage, the two collaborated on three more movies: the quirky comedy Home Movies (1979), the hit suspense-thriller Dressed to Kill (1980) and the acclaimed neo-noir mystery Blow Out (1981). Brian wrote Nancy’s role in Dressed to Kill specifically for her, while Blow Out was redeveloped when male lead John Travolta suggested the three of them work together again after previously collaborating on Carrie. Like often with Brian’s films, all involve the theme of voyeurism. During a brief break-up in 1978, Brian tried to repeat the success of the teen slasher with another supernatural horror, The Fury (1978). Nancy on the other end, co-starred in Robert Zemeckis’ teen cult classic I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978) and Steven Spielberg’s ill-fated flop epic 1941 (1979), showing viewers she had some comedic chops on top of good looks and dramatic potential. Despite being together at the center of showbusiness during their primes, we don’t know much about Brian & Nancy’s relationship at home except through retrospective comments by Nancy in interviews. One issue for her during their marriage was the press trying to start rumors and speculate about them because Brian had a reputation for being aloof or unpleasant. It also didn’t help that he was accused of misogyny for regularly featuring provocative female nudity and graphic depictions of female murder victims [both of which Nancy participated in through her performances].
(MGM Pictures / Kino Lorber)
But the actress usually insists none of this was relevant in private, and the couple separated because neither could decide where they wanted the relationship to go in the future. Reading between the lines, it sounds like drugs might have been a factor as well. After divorcing in 1984, Brian continued to have a famously bumpy career with some extreme highs and unfortunate lows. Nancy carried on acting, played the female lead in the biggest movie of her career, Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi action flick Robocop (1987), appeared in its subsequent sequels; and had roles in Abel Ferrara’s revenge thriller The Gladiator (1986) and Steven Soderbergh’s heist romance Out of Sight (1998). These days, Nancy has come around to appreciating her small legacy after feeling disappointed she didn’t have many hits outside of her films with her ex-husband.
I think the most unfair aspect of Nancy’s career is how she was occasionally singled out as the weak link in her popular movies, even receiving two Worst Actress nominations for Dressed to Kill by the Razzies and the Stinkers Awards. [To be fair, Brian has amusingly received the most Worst Director Razzie noms as well.] In an age where movie fans are asking viewers and critics to reconsider Tippi Hedren’s and Shelley Duvall’s ‘poor’ performances in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), Nancy deserves the same reappraisal. Similar to Tippi and Shelley, Nancy’s own experiences while filming weren’t a cakewalk either; whether it was receiving real slaps from Betty Buckley during the detention scene of Carrie or having to really hold her breath in a car underwater during a pivotal moment in Blow Out. Just looking back at Nancy’s characters, she wasn’t particularly typecast. I really find it hard to believe the theory that a bad performance can be fixed with only good direction and editing. We’re still looking at the performer deliver the lines and facial reactions. I don’t think we can give credit to only Brian and the editors for Nancy believably portraying a bitchy high schooler in Carrie, to a streets smart call girl in Dressed to Kill, to an endearing ditz in Blow Out. If Brian can be considered a legend despite some flaws, so can Nancy.