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The
Writeup: Patricia Neal has suffered more personal
setbacks in her life than any one person should be able
to survive. Yet somehow she bounced back every time and
got her career back in order. Patricia's Hollywood career
began after she won a Tony Award for Lillian Hellman's "Another
Part of the Forest" and numerous offers began coming in.
She made her debut opposite Ronald Reagan in John Loves
Mary (1949) and a wonderful screen career was begun. She
starred opposite Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead (1949)
and shortly thereafter began a much publicized affair with
the married star. She starred in, among others, Bright Leaf
(1950), Three Secrets (1950), The Day the Earth Stood Still
(1951), and Week-End with Father (1951) before suffering
a nervous breakdown after ending her relationship with Cooper.
She took a long hiatus from American films to recover, and
in that time married writer Roald Dahl. She returned in
1957 with A Face in the Crowd, but work was less frequent
for her at this point. Her next film was Breakfast at Tiffany's
(1961), but she reached a creative high point with Hud (1963),
winning an Oscar. After the film she suffered another tragedy,
her youngest child, Theo was hit by a cab and killed, and
her youngest daughter Olivia died from the measles. She
managed to bounce back from these tragedies with the film
In Harm's Way (1965) and had begun work on another when
she suffered a series of strokes, effectively paralyzing
her and preventing her from working. She staged another
comeback, this time nabbing an Oscar nomination in her return
film, The Subject Was Roses (1968). She subsequently appeared
in the occasional feature film, such as The Night Digger
(1971), Baxter! (1973), The Passage (1979), Ghost Story
(1981) and Cookie's Fortune (1999).
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