My Extraordinary Ordinary Life
The key here is that phrase in the subtitle,“extraordinary ordinary.” Spacek, who hails from Quitman, Texas, got into show business by accident, playing her guitar for a group of friends while she was visiting her cousin, actor Rip Torn, in New York. She lucked into stardom with her second movie, Terrence Malick’s instant classic Badlands (on the set of which she also met the movie’s art director, Jack Fisk, to whom she is still married). Spacek wound up in her Oscar-winning role in Coal Miner’s Daughter because Loretta Lynn, the movie’s biographical subject, had been telling people Spacek should play her in the movie. Readers looking for one of those dirt-dishing Hollywood memoirs should keep looking, as this is the story of an ordinary, down-to-earth woman who has lived, quite by chance, a life that has more than a few extraordinary aspects. There’s plenty of behind-the-scenes insight, but that’s not what the book is about. This is one star bio that puts family above fame, tranquility above stardom. --David Pitt