{"id":1237,"date":"2009-07-22T07:30:37","date_gmt":"2009-07-22T11:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buzzsandbox.movieunlimited.com\/?p=1237"},"modified":"2014-11-21T19:33:23","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T00:33:23","slug":"joan-cusack-friend-to-the-working-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=1237","title":{"rendered":"Joan Cusack: Friend to the Working Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"joan-cusack1\"<\/p>\n

“I was never the ‘babe,’\u00a0 so I knew I’d never get those big roles. I’d always be the best friend or the quirky sidekick.” So said comedienne\/actress Joan Cusack<\/a> about a body of work that has garnered her many fans (including, in spite of the comment, her fair share of male admirers) and two Academy Award nominations, all for following in the Hollywood\u00a0tradition of Joan Blondell<\/a>, Eve Arden<\/a>, Thelma Ritter<\/a>, and others known for playing the heroine’s wisecracking gal pal.<\/p>\n

The second of five acting siblings (Ann, Bill, Susie, and, of course, John Cusack<\/a>), Joan was born in New York City in October, 1962. Her interest in performing may have come from her father, an ad man-turned-documentary filmmaker and actor. Joan’s first screen turn was in a little-seen 1980 coming-of-age tale, Cutting Loose,\u00a0 and\u00a0 later that year she played a\u00a0put-upon high school outcast in My Bodyguard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1983, Joan and younger brother John had small roles in the teen comedy Class<\/a>, the first of\u00a0 10 movies they would appear in together. Following\u00a0minor roles in Sixteen Candles<\/a> and Grandview, U.S.A.,\u00a0 Cusack got a chance to show her comedic ability on TV as a regular\u00a0on Saturday Night Live’s\u00a01985-86 season, in a cast that also included Robert Downey, Jr.<\/a>,\u00a0 Anthony Michael Hall<\/a> and\u00a0Jon Lovitz<\/a>. After playing\u00a0 a harried newsroom worker in Broadcast News<\/a> and a Mafia wife in Married\u00a0to the Mob<\/a>, Joan won her first Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination\u00a0as\u00a0the big-haired, gum-popping\u00a0friend of career-minded secretary Melanie Griffith<\/a> in Working Girl<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Quirky” would certainly describe a lot of Cusack’s\u00a0work in the 1990s: an eccentric nurse who has an affair with Jessica Lange’s<\/a> teenage son in Men Don’t Leave; the murderous gold-digger after C<\/a>hristopher Lloyd in Addams Family Values;\u00a0 the super-efficient secretary to brother John’s hit man in Grosse Pointe Blank; and the voice of rootin’-tootin’ cowgirl doll Jessie in Toy Story 2. 1997\u00a0saw Joan, playing\u00a0In & Out’s left-at-the-altar fiancee of “wrongly” outed teacher\u00a0Kevin Kline, garner\u00a0her second Oscar nomination.<\/p>\n

Cusack returned to TV in 2001 as the star of her own short-lived sitcom, What About Joan. More recently, she was seen as the principal of The School of Rock, was one of Jennifer Anniston’s Friends with Money, and played Isla Fisher’s mother in Confessions of a Shopaholic, as her well-received and idiosyncratic career path continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I was never the ‘babe,’\u00a0 so I knew I’d never get those big roles. I’d always be the best friend or the quirky sidekick.” So said comedienne\/actress Joan Cusack about a body of work that has garnered her many fans…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[529],"tags":[1491],"coauthors":[1720],"class_list":["post-1237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scene-stealers","tag-character-actors"],"yoast_head":"\nJoan Cusack: Friend To The Working Girl, A Short Film History<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Joan Cusack: One of the most famous character actresses of the past two decades. 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