Career Highlights: Blue Sky, The Ballad of Little Jo, Diary of a Mad Housewife
First Major Screen Credit: The Social Register (1934)
Biography
Following graduation from Northern Illinois University, Carrie Snodgress earned her MA from Chicago's Goodman Theatre School. Making the Hollywood rounds in the late 1960s, she drew attention to herself with her offbeat characterizations in such Universal television productions as the weekly series The Outsider and the 1968 TV movie The Whole World is Watching. In 1970, she earned an Oscar nomination for her first theatrical-film performance as Tina Balser in director Frank Perry's Diary of a Mad Housewife. After this one film, and her 1971 starring appearance as a social worker in the 2-hour TV pilot The Impatient Heart, Carrie dropped completely from public view. During her years away from the cameras, she lived with rock musician Neil Young, the father of her son Zeke. Then, just as suddenly as she'd disappeared, Snodgress resurfaced in Brian DePalma's The Fury (1978). In 1981, she made her off-Broadway debut in A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking (the other "chick" was Susan Sarandon). Since that time, Carrie Snodgress has made sporadic film and TV appearances in such roles as psychopathic murderer Joan Freeman in Charles Bronson's Murphy's Law (1986) and Stefania Comenici in the 1985 TV miniseries Nadia; later, she was seen in 8 Seconds (1994) and the long-delayed Blue Sky (1994). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Snodgress was born in Park Ridge, Illinois.[1] She attended Maine Township High School East in Park Ridge then Northern Illinois University before leaving to pursue acting. Snodgress trained for the stage at the Goodman Theatre, in Chicago. After a number of minor TV appearances, her film debut was an uncredited appearance in Easy Rider in 1969 and a credited appearance in 1970 in Rabbit, Run opposite James Caan.
The first choice for Adrian (in the movie Rocky) was a girl named Carrie Snodgress, who I wanted badly because, at the time, I wanted Adrian's family to be Irish and Harvey Keitel would be the brother. She said there wasn't enough money in it (we were getting paid $360 before taxes), so I said “I'll give you my share, I truly want you.” She passed to do a part in Buffalo Bill and the Indians, which never happened for her.
She and Neil Young had split up about 1975. Young's song "A Man Needs a Maid" was inspired by Snodgress, featuring the lyric "I fell in love with the actress/she was playing a part that I could understand."[citation needed]
Later she and film score composer Jack Nitzsche became lovers. In 1979, Nitzsche was charged with threatening to kill her after he barged into her home and beat her with a handgun. He pleaded guilty to threatening her and was fined and placed on three years' probation.[citation needed]
Her Broadway debut came in 1981 with A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking. She also appeared in All the Way Home, Oh! What a Lovely War, Caesar and Cleopatra, Tartuffe, The Balcony and The Boor (all at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago); and Curse of the Starving Class at the Tiffany Theatre (in Los Angeles). Other films include Murphy's Law, White Man's Burden, Pale Rider and Blue Sky.
Death
She had been hospitalized in Los Angeles awaiting a liver transplant when she died of heart and liver failure. She was 58 years old.