Betty Buckley (Carrie) Carrie

Buckley played the only adult who sees Carrie as a person

Betty Buckley's Miss Collins is the film's emotional counterweight -- the gym teacher who breaks up the shower incident, punishes the bullies, and becomes the only adult in Carrie's life who treats her as a human being rather than a problem. Collins sits Carrie in front of a mirror and tells her she is pretty. She shares a story about her own prom. She tells Carrie "You'll never forget it." Then she dies under the basketball backboard in the destruction Carrie causes.b33 (wikipedia)

Collins is the film's most honest character about the impulse to blame the victim

What makes Buckley's performance distinctive is a single confession. In the principal's office after the shower incident, Collins admits to Morton: "The whole thing just made me wanna take her and shake her, too." The line is the film's most honest moment about how Carrie's helplessness provokes even those who want to help. Collins recognizes the impulse in herself and is ashamed of it, which is what separates her from every other adult in the film.

The confession runs through the rest of the Collins arc. Her protectiveness in the detention scene, her encouragement in the mirror, her prom memory -- all are inflected by the knowledge that Collins once felt the same contempt the girls acted on. She overcame it. The other adults did not. Morton cannot even remember Carrie's name.

Buckley went on to define the role of Grizabella in Cats

After Carrie, Buckley built a distinguished career on Broadway, originating the role of Grizabella in the original Broadway production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats (1982) and winning the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Her rendition of "Memory" became one of the most recognizable performances in Broadway history. The stage career overshadowed her film work, but Carrie remained her most significant screen role -- a performance that accomplishes more in limited screen time than many lead performances achieve in two hours. (wikipedia)

The Collins arc tracks across all five acts of the beat sheet

The beat sheet reveals that Collins appears across the film:

  • Beat 3: Comforts Carrie in the empty locker room after the showerb3
  • Beat 9: Punishes the shower-scene girls; bans Chris from promb9
  • Beat 12: Walks Carrie through the mirror — "a pretty girl"b12
  • Beat 22: The decoration crew presses Sue on Tommy and Carrie; Collins's interrogation of Sue's motives sits in this stretchb22
  • Beat 26: Shares her own prom memory at the table — Carrie answers "like being on Mars"b26
  • Beat 29: Ejects Sue from the gym, blocking the one warning that could have stopped the bucketb29
  • Beat 33: Dies under the basketball backboard during the gym destructionb33

The arc runs from honesty about her own worst impulse to death at the hands of the girl she tried to save. Collins is the character who most clearly embodies the film's argument that kindness and cruelty converge on the same target -- she did everything right and died for it.

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