Sissy Spacek’s Extraordinary life with Jack Fisk, David Lynch and Terrence Malick

Sissy Spacek has been a muse, a movie star, an icon and an artist in the course of her career.  She has worked with and inspired some of our greatest artists, and has a resume that any actor would envy.  Her film debut in Terrence Malick’s “Badlands”, would have been the role of a lifetime for anyone else, but for Sissy it was only the beginning.  She’s probably best known for her chilling performance as the title role in “Carrie”, and of course, her Academy Award winning role in “Cole Miner’s Daughter”, but the list of outstanding performances goes on and on with “Missing”, “The River”, “Crimes of the Heart”, and more recently “Get Low”, and “The Help”.  She recently stopped by SiriusXM to talk with Ron Bennington about her new book, “My Extraordinary, Ordinary Life.”  Excerpts from the interview appear below.

Ron Bennington: First of all, let me just say this. This book, “My Extraordinary Ordinary Life”, it’s almost like we’re in a conversation with you throughout this whole book. It sounds like your voice and not everybody who writes is able to do that.

Sissy Spacek: Thank you. Thank you very much. That was the plan.

Ron Bennington: And so many kind of chances that you took. I think young people reading this, it goes to show, at that point, you’ve got to make some leaps when you’re young and want to find out where you’ll go in this world. Leaving Texas, coming to New York in the 60’s, gigantic leap for you.

Sissy Spacek: Yes it was for someone who had seen very few two-story buildings.

Ron Bennington: And then to come here at that time where it was a pretty dangerous place. It’s not like it is now. It was a pretty scary place.

Sissy Spacek: Particularly Times Square was pretty rough. But a beautiful place. I loved it. I stayed here almost 6 years and they had to drag me out kicking and screaming.

Ron Bennington: Well look, I mean the people who you ended up hanging with and the places here. You’re hanging out in Max’s Kansas City and the Fillmore East which I mean to me if you had to pick the history of New York, those are 2 places that you want to be where things are happening.

Sissy Spacek: Yeah. It was great time. I spent a lot of time at the Fillmore. I lived just a few blocks from there.

Ron Bennington: Seeing the Allman Brothers when they came to New York had to be phenomenal. Phenomenal at that age.

Sissy Spacek: It was amazing. I had a good friend who started out as a record runner and I would go around to Philly and Boston with him to place records at radio stations, something that also my brother did and I did that with him too. But then, it’s Johnny Podell, he became, you know he just managed everybody that was anybody in the music business. So I got in the backdoor real often.

Ron Bennington: But that seems to happen with you, right? I mean your first real big film is with a genius when you’re working with Terrence Malick as a young person. That film will be remembered for eternity.

Sissy Spacek: Well I will certainly remember it. It was definitely a turning point for me and my career. It’s when I realized that film could be art and I had a template for the type of films that I wanted to try to be a part of.

Ron Bennington: Yeah, because you started like that is not like suddenly you want to go backwards and start doing Hollywood type films.

Sissy Spacek: I knew nothing. I knew absolutely nothing. And I was the raw product, so I was very much formed by that experience.

Ron Bennington: And that’s where you met Jack, during that.

Sissy Spacek: Jack Fisk. Yes.

Ron Bennington: And who is, if anyone has seen the Terrence Malick films, he’s the production designer and art designer and part of the reasons that these films are as beautiful as they are. And did he also, did Jack direct you in Raggedy Man?

Sissy Spacek: He did.

Ron Bennington: He did do that?

Sissy Spacek: He did.

Ron Bennington: Another phenomenal film.

Sissy Spacek: He is the most creative person I’ve ever known. I actually learned as much from him about filmmaking and about acting as I did anyone because we worked on a lot of the same films. And he had piles and piles of research. So it was through him that I learned about researching characters and doing a little background work.

Ron Bennington: And you, as he’s researching the time and the architecture what’s happening, you started to say wait, I could build my characters the same that he’s building these sets.

Sissy Spacek: Well he used the Stanislavski method of production design. When I worked on Badlands, when I went into this house he had put together, into the bedroom of my character Holly Sargis, usually when you go into a set, you open the drawers and they’re empty, you open the closets, they’re empty. That was not the case here. He had dressed the set with things that related to the character and things that I found that made me learn about my character.

Ron Bennington: So this is stuff that even we watching the film may not see. Stuff that’s in the drawers or just things that only the actors would see.

Sissy Spacek: Exactly. Right. You see it by what it does to the actors working on the set. The osmosis.

Ron Bennington: So you could walk on that set and live there if you needed to.

Sissy Spacek: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And when I worked on Carrie, he designed that as well. And I found a book of Doré etchings of the plates of the Bible depicting all the Bible stories. And I used that in my body language. You know, Jack has really been instrumental in training me. (laughs)

Ron Bennington: Yeah and he still works with Terrence to this day.

Sissy Spacek: He works with Terrence Malick. He works with David Lynch and Paul Thomas Anderson. He’s really the go-to guy.

Ron Bennington: It’s really amazing too because all of these films that we’re talking about are just gorgeous to look at. These are the type of films that you could turn the sound down and still have an experience. Badlands for me is still, when I’ll go back and watch it, I’m just like, I’m just overcome with just how beautiful it is. And not only was that like a debut for you, but that was Martin Sheen’s breakout at the same time.

Sissy Spacek: Amazing. He’s amazing. That was a really exciting time in film. It was the artist ruled. It was a director driven film industry at that time. Scorsese and Spielberg, De Palma, Malick. And then of course, David Lynch. When he came along, he stepped right into that as well. It was exciting and I got to ride that wave. So I’m very grateful.

Ron Bennington: Well the other thing that comes out in your book, is that it didn’t seem like you started living a Hollywood lifestyle even when things, even after winning the Oscar, you still kept a distance for yourself.

Sissy Spacek: The things that I loved most, I’m a filmmaker, I love filmmaking. And I think because I met Jack and Terry Malick so early and I was married to Jack and still am, thankfully, so I was much more aware of the production side of filmmaking than would have been if I had just spent my time with all actors. Because we come in when everything’s ready. We have a week or so of rehearsal and then we come in, but I think because of my connection with production I thought Hollywood was different to me. Hollywood is where you made movies. It was where I knew where all the prop houses were. I knew where all the sound stages were. I knew where all the costume houses were. So that’s where we made movies, so that was the side of Hollywood that I exposed to.

Ron Bennington: And you were able to live an artist’s life by not kind of going into that, but I imagine being married to Jack, it’s got to come out kind of handy around the house, doesn’t it? Where you’re like “I’ve got a great idea of what to do with this room.”

Sissy Spacek: I used to wake up in the morning and say you know wouldn’t it be great if we had a window there and I’d hear (electric saw noises), He’d be sawing. It’s sad when he goes off to work on a film, you know I don’t have my production designer at home. So it’s like there’s the good news and the bad news.

Ron Bennington: So that, you’ve kept having fun with this after all these years too.

Sissy Spacek: Yeah. And living with Jack, Jack and David Lynch when they were very young and just teenagers in high school met, they were both painters. They were the only 2 painters in their high school. And they became fast friends and they wanted to live the art life. They wanted to be artists. And I stepped into that. And certainly because of Jack, I’ve gotten to reap the benefits of that.

Ron Bennington: And you’ve always wanted to entertain your whole life.

Sissy Spacek: I had an epiphany when I was about 6 years old. I was watching the Cochettes march out on stage twirling and tapping and I remember thinking I should be up there. I could do that.

Ron Bennington: This is should be where you’re at. Front and center.

Sissy Spacek: Little did I know that it would get much deeper than that. I’m really grateful for the career I have had and the life I’ve had. Though it’s a huge leap from my growing up in Texas to my career. My childhood there is what has informed my life and my work as an adult. And when I first started to write a book, I was just going to write it about my childhood, but I realized that I couldn’t. There was so many things that, it had informed so many things that I needed to be able to jump ahead. You know you learn a lot when you write a book about your life.

Ron Bennington: It is phenomenal how it starts together, doesn’t it? And I do think that boldness plays such a part of this and then also having your eyes open enough to find out who the other people are that you should be with the fact that you found Terrence and you found Jack and were able to recognize that. I mean I think having that eye for this is the quality stuff. This is the important part to the work also plays a big part for this work.

Sissy Spacek: When I met Terry and Jack, they were certainly much more sophisticated than me, but I was smart enough to recognize that they really had it going on. I was the raw product. And I was so fortunate to be formed, I was putty in Terry’s hands. And I was lucky that it was someone so brilliant. And so amazing. And then to have met Jack, that just changed not only the trajectory of my career, but of my life also. We’ve just had a…he’s the kind of guy that wakes up everyday and says not what do I have to do today, but what do we get to do today?

Ron Bennington: It’s “My Extraordinary Ordinary Life. Sissy Spacek, thank you so much for coming by today. I appreciate it.

Sissy Spacek: Thank you.

Ron Bennington: And thanks for writing the book and getting all these experiences down too. It’s good to hear it. And we’ll see you next time coming through.

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You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Not yet a subscriber?  Click here for a free trial subscription.

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You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews at RonBenningtonInterviews.com.

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Order Sissy Spacek’s fantastic new book “An Extraordinary, Ordinary Life” at Amazon.com or find it in bookstores everywhere.