In 1970, Kathy Bates headed to New York to try her luck at acting. She reminisces about the time, how she was never an ingenue but managed to make it work. “I was never an ingenue,” she says. “I’ve always just been a character actor. When I was younger, it was a real problem, because I was never pretty enough. It was hard, not just for the lack of work, but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you,” Bates said.
Her broadway career took off in 1980 when she played Stella May in Come Back To The Five And Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. The actress lost out on film-screen adaptations of characters she played a few times. But when she turned 42 years old, she turned into a successful start almost overnight because of her role as a psychotic fan in Misery which even earned her a best actress Academy Award.
