Louise Fletcher Biography

Louise returned to film, after taking time off to start a family, in Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us (1974), and came to the attention of director Milos Forman, who was casting the difficult role of the nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's NestM (1975). She won the role -- and then the Academy Award -- portraying deadly, inflexible Nurse Ratched, who has since become a cultural icon. Numerous film roles followed, including co-starring turns with Peter Falk in The Cheap Detective (1978) and with Richard Burton in Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). Fletcher has appeared in a number of science fiction and horror classics such as Firestarter (1984), Brainstorm (1983), and Flowers in the Attic (1987). Though she earned an Emmy Award nomination for her recurring role on "Picket Fences" (1992), Fletcher is perhaps best known to recent television audiences as Kai Winn from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" (1993) and as Nora Bloom from the cult classic "VR.5" (1995).