Patricia Neal’s life falls short of the most terrible dramas devised by any screenwriter. Patricia Neal (real name Patsy Lou Neal) was an iconic actress between the 40s and 70s, but in front of her presence that filled the screen, her acting solvency that she demonstrated in front of the cameras, even winning an Oscar, when the spotlights turned off I was profoundly unhappy.
Patricia Neal was born on January 20, 1926 in Packard Kentucky, in the northeast of the United States, and since she was a child she expressed her intention to become an actress. She studied theater at Northwestern University and made her Broadway debut in ‘Voice of the Turtle,’ which earned her a Tony Award for drama. In 1949 she made her film debut playing her alongside Ronald Reagan in ‘John Loves Mary’. That same year she starred with Gary Cooper in the King Vidor film ‘The Spring’. Cooper and Neal had started a romance two years earlier and the idyll came to light as a result of the movie. When the press of the time charged against the actress, she, scared, decided to break the relationship. Cooper, who was Catholic, also did nothing to prevent a breakup that was an emotional crisis for Neal.
In 1951 he starred in ‘Ultimatum to Earth’, along with Michael Rennie and Billy Grax, which became a science fiction classic. That same year, she met the writer Roald Dahl at a party, whom she married on July 2, 1953. In 1952 she had filmed ‘Diplomatic Mail’, by Henry Hathaway or ‘Something for the Birds’, by Robert Wise. . And she tries her luck in Europe making ‘Your wife’, by Giovanni Paolucci, in Italy.
With her marriage to Roald Dash she had five children. The continuous maternity of her made that in the decade of the 50s the actress remained quite apart from the screen. Her eldest daughter died in 1962 at the age of seven from encephalitis after not receiving adequate care to treat the measles that afflicted her. Two years earlier, her four-month-old son Theo suffered brain damage when the car he was sleeping in was hit by a taxi and a bus on the streets of New York. The actress was devastated by two blows in such a row, but she managed to recover with the help of her husband, she gave birth to her daughter Lucy from her and returned to the world of cinema, participating in ‘The Subject Was Roses’ .
Elia Kazan called her in 1957 to star in ‘A Face in the Crowd’ and in 1961 she appeared in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’, by Blake Edwards. It will be two years later, in 1963 in the movie ‘The Bravest Among a Thousand’, alongside Paul Newman, when she wins the Oscar for best actress. She also from 1963 she is her ‘Psyche 59’, by Alexander Singer, and two years later she stars in ‘First Victory’, by Otto Preminger.
In February 1965 while pregnant again, Neal suffered a series of strokes that left her unable to speak and walk for a time. The actress had to undergo a hard recovery, but in August of that year she gave birth to her daughter without any problem. The actress stayed away from the big screen, but she did some small roles for television and collaborated in various documentaries. She returned to the cinema, fully recovered, she is produced in 1968 with ‘A story of three strangers’, for which she obtains a new Oscar nomination. In 1973 she traveled to Spain to participate, called by José Luis Borau, in ‘Hay que matar a B’, sharing the cast with Darren McGavin, Stephane Audran and Burgess Meredith.
Patricia Neal spaced more and more her work in the cinema. In 1979 she shot ‘The Passage’ and in 1981 ‘Historia macabre’ directed by John Irvin. Neal’s marriage to Dahl ended in 1983, after 30 years, when the writer had an affair with one of his friends. Neal continued to act, appearing with Glenn Close in “Cookie’s Fortune” in 1999 and in a starring role in the 2009 TV movie “Flying By” with Billy Ray Cyrus. In addition, Neal published an autobiography, “As I Am” and became in the grandmother of the model and presenter Sophie Dahl. Due to the fight that she always had against strokes and brain injuries, in the city of Knoxville, where she lived much of her childhood, there is a rehabilitation center named after her, where these types of diseases are treated. .
Patricia Neal died on August 8, 2010 at her home on Martha’s Vineyard surrounded by her relatives, as a result of lung cancer.
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