Genevieve Bujold (Coma) Coma

Bujold was a serious actress who almost turned down a film called "Coma"

Genevieve Bujold came to Coma with an Oscar nomination for Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), a Golden Globe win, and a career built on arthouse and prestige projects -- Alain Resnais's The War Is Over (1966), Philip de Broca's King of Hearts (1966), Brian De Palma's Obsession (1976). She was not the obvious choice for a medical thriller. She was Crichton's only choice. (wikipedia)

Her reluctance was genuine:

"I don't like to read scripts, and I would not be immediately tempted by anything called 'Coma.' It was Crichton. I met him and liked the way he talked about the movie. He was intelligent and clear. I trusted him, especially the medical background he would bring to the story." — Genevieve Bujold, The Washington Post (1978)

According to AFI production records, Bujold was "cajoled" into accepting by Crichton, a personal friend. When she first read the screenplay, she envisioned Paul Newman in the lead -- the same actor MGM had wanted. She took the role precisely because it was the kind traditionally given to men. (afi)

She carried the film with intelligence rather than glamour

Crichton and Bujold made a deliberate choice to play Susan Wheeler straight -- no Hollywood polish, no makeup-department heroism. Crichton praised her commitment:

"The shadows under the eyes come from working three months with only two or three days rest. We could have made her more glamorous, but she wanted to do it straight, which is outrageous." — Michael Crichton, Film Comment (interview cited in Sragow, 2019)

The result was a performance that critics recognized as something new in genre filmmaking. Pauline Kael, who found the film itself too antiseptic, was unequivocal about its star:

"There's no way to sanitize this actress. She's like a soft furry animal and she's irreducibly curious; she snuggles deep inside the shallow material." — Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (1978) (paywalled)

Michael Sragow at Film Comment called her performance "incandescent and intrepid" and identified what made it different from the genre norm:

"A strong heroine with an important job and hence a personality structure similar to a traditional male's." — Michael Sragow, Film Comment (2019)

Critics agreed she was the best thing in the film

The critical consensus on Bujold was nearly universal, even among reviewers who disagreed about the film itself. Andrew Sarris in the Village Voice wrote:

"For once, Genevieve Bujold is perfectly cast. The movie is gothic from the word go, and, fortunately, Bujold, as a dominating female protagonist, is spunky and zesty enough to make the whole enterprise work as harmless, escapist entertainment." — Andrew Sarris, Village Voice (1978)

Ken Anderson placed her at the center of the film's enduring appeal:

"Bujold is terrific here, spunky and sharp with that great throaty voice of hers and those darkly intelligent, inquisitive eyes." — Ken Anderson, Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For (2012)

Kimberly Lindbergs, revisiting the film in 2020, found her just as effective four decades later:

"Bujold delivers a pitch-perfect performance playing a twenty-something surgical resident." — Kimberly Lindbergs, Cinebeats (2020)

David Thomson, quoted in Alex on Film's retrospective, captured the broader career irony: Bujold "is so remarkable in [Coma] that she makes one conscious of how a steady career has neglected her real virtues." (alexonfilm)

The pantyhose scene became the film's feminist signature

Before climbing into the ventilation ducts above OR 8, Susan pauses to remove her pantyhose and shoes. It is a small, practical act that broke with decades of genre convention. Ken Anderson documented the audience response:

"After years of women in thrillers and horror films falling victim to their feminine finery, this small act of practicality was such a revolutionary repudiation of a sexist genre cliche that on the opening weekend screening of Coma in February of 1978, the audience actually broke into applause." — Ken Anderson, Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For (2012)

Michael Sragow noted the same moment from a different angle: "Bujold must be the first lead in a thriller who has to dispose of pantyhose before moving into action." The detail captures in miniature what the entire performance achieves -- a woman who treats the world as a practical problem to be solved, not a stage for glamorous suffering. (lecinemadreams)

After Coma, she never became the star Hollywood expected

The Washington Post's February 1978 profile predicted that if Coma clicked, Bujold would "jump in Hollywood status from merely talented and attractive leading actress to Bankable Star." Coma clicked. The jump did not happen. Bujold continued working steadily -- Murder by Decree (1979), Choose Me (1984), and most memorably David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers (1988), opposite Jeremy Irons. But the A-list career that Coma seemed to promise never materialized. She was too particular, too uninterested in playing the Hollywood game. She famously quit Star Trek: Voyager after a day and a half of shooting, reportedly finding the television production schedule intolerable. (wikipedia)

The result is that Coma remains the clearest evidence of what Bujold could do with a genre role. She made Susan Wheeler the prototype for a kind of female lead -- competent, unglamorous, professionally authoritative -- that Hollywood would not fully embrace until Sigourney Weaver in Alien the following year.