First coming to prominence for her role as Sybylla Melvyn in the coming-of-age saga
My Brilliant Career (1979), for which she won
BAFTA Awards for
Best Actress and Best Newcomer, she also played the lead in such
Australian New Wave classics as
Winter of Our Dreams (1981) (as the waif-like heroin addict) and
Heatwave (1982) (as the radical tenant organizer). Her first foray into international film came in
1981 when she played the younger version of
Ingrid Bergman's Golda Meir in the television docudrama
A Woman Called Golda. In 1984 she was cast as Adela Quested in
David Lean's final film
A Passage to India, an adaptation of
E.M. Forster's novel of the same name. Although she and Lean reportedly butted heads during the film's production, she was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. She returned to Australian cinema for her next two films,
Kangaroo, in which she displayed a fine affinity for accents as a
German-born writer's wife, and
High Tide, in which she gave what some critics believe is her finest performance as a foot-loose mother who attempts to reunite with her teenage daughter who is being raised by the paternal grandmother. She earned
Australian Film Institute Awards for both roles, and a
National Society of Film Critics award for
High Tide's brief American theatrical run. In 1990 she played a brief cameo in
Woody Allen's Alice. A busy 1991 featured acclaimed supporting roles as an ill-fated Southern ghostwriter in
Joel Coen's Barton Fink, which won the
Palme d'Or at the
Cannes Film Festival and in
David Cronenberg's well-received adaptation of the hallucinogenic novel
Naked Lunch. She won an
Independent Spirit Award for her lively work as mannish authoress
George Sand in
Impromptu and returned to
E.M. Forster territory in
Where Angels Fear to Tread. Finally, she earned additional awards and recognition for her performance as real-life World War II heroine
Mary Lindell in the
CBS Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation
One Against the Wind. In 1992 she played a major role in
Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives as one half of a divorcing couple. For this performance she earned an array of critics' awards as well as an Oscar and
Golden Globe nominations for best supporting actress.
Later memorable Davis roles include the mysterious,
schizophrenic mother of a teenager in boarding school in the well-made but little-seen
On My Own (1993), the lifelong Australian Communist Party member reacting to the downfall of the Soviet Union in
Children of the Revolution (1996), two more Allen films,
Deconstructing Harry (1997) and
Celebrity (1998), a high-strung
White House Chief of Staff in
Absolute Power (1997), a touching performance as a supportive mother in
Swimming Upstream (2003) and colorful supporting roles in two 2006 films,
The Break-Up and
Marie-Antoinette.
Much of her recent work has been on television, where she has scooped up an impressive collection of
Emmy Award nominations. She won her first Emmy for portraying the woman who gently coaxes rigid militarywoman
Glenn Close out of the closet in
Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story and she picked up subsequent nominations for her repressed Australian outback mother in
The Echo of Thunder (1998), her portrayal of
Lillian Hellman in
Dash and Lilly (1999), her frigid society matron in
A Cooler Climate (1999) and her interpretation of
Nancy Reagan in the controversial biopic
The Reagans (2003). She earned a second Emmy, among many other awards, for her portrayal of
Judy Garland in the 2001 television
biopic Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows. In July
2006, she received her ninth
Emmy nomination for her performance in the TV film
A Little Thing Called Murder. Her tenth nomination came in 2007 for
The Starter Wife, Davis went on to win the
Emmy, but was not present. In August 2007 she appeared opposite
Sam Waterston in an episode of ABC's anthology series
Masters of Science Fiction, directed by
Mark Rydell. It has also been announced that Davis is to appear in the 2008 mini-series "Diamonds", green lighted by Alchemy Television Group.
Her stage work has been limited, and mostly confined to Australia. In the earliest stages of her career she played
Juliet opposite
Mel Gibson's Romeo, she also played both Cordelia and the Fool in a 1984 staging of
King Lear and her 1986 assumption of the title role in
Hedda Gabler was widely admired in Australia. In 2004 she starred in and co-directed
Victory, as a
Puritan woman determined her locate her husband's dismembered corpse. Internationally, she created the role of The Actress in
Terry Johnson's Insignificance at the
Royal Court in
London and appeared in a brief
Los Angeles production of
Tom Stoppard's Hapgood in 1989.
rss feed