Veronica Cartwright Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Veronica Cartwright (born April 20, 1949, Bristol, England) played Nancy Bellicec in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). She was 29 when the film was shot.
Cartwright grew up on American television and then became the last survivor of two 70s genre pictures
Cartwright had been working since she was nine — her first film was In Love and War (1958) — and by 14 she was Cathy Brenner in Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), a recurring player on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, a regular on Daniel Boone through the late sixties. Body Snatchers was her first adult horror role. Alien came less than a year later. Both films gave her the same job: be the one the audience watches while everyone else gets picked off.
TV Tropes notes the thread running through her career: in The Birds she played a Northern California resident battling an aggressive invasive species; in Body Snatchers she plays one battling another; in Alien (1979) she would face yet another deadly alien creature. Three films in sixteen years, the same assignment each time. (tvtropes)
"We'd be rehearsing, and he had his hair in pink rollers because he didn't want to get a perm. Then, about three weeks before we finished, he decided to get a perm." — Veronica Cartwright on Donald Sutherland, Cinema Retro (2013)
Kaufman didn't tell Cartwright what Sutherland was going to do
The final shot of the film — Matthew, pod, pointing at Nancy and shrieking — was shot cold. Ben Burtt ran the scream live on set. Cartwright's reaction, which carries the last beat of the movie, is a reaction to a noise she was hearing for the first time.
"I don't remember that we even told Veronica until Donald turned and did that shriek." — Philip Kaufman, It Came From Blog (2018)
Cartwright confirmed the ambush in her own telling:
"I learned about it the day we filmed it. That was not scripted at all. I did not know he was going to be a pod. That reaction came totally out of him betraying me!" — Veronica Cartwright, Cinema Retro (2013)
Ridley Scott used the same trick on her a year later when he didn't warn her about the chestburster on Alien. Both films got a real scream out of Cartwright by not telling her the plan.
Kaufman is an actor's director, and Cartwright knew it
Cartwright has spoken warmly about Philip Kaufman's (in Body Snatchers, as director) set as a place where actors were trusted to find their own way into scenes:
"He's such a special, lovely person. He loves actors. He's an actor's director." — Veronica Cartwright, Cinema Retro (2013)
Nancy is the practical one in the Bellicec marriage
Cartwright plays Nancy as the one keeping the bathhouse running while Jack rants about Kibner's bestseller success, the person who holds still and watches while the scene around her comes apart. When everything has collapsed, Nancy is the one who names it out loud:
"They're all pods, all of them!" — Nancy Bellicec (Veronica Cartwright), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), dialogue
Alex Good, reviewing the film at Alex on Film, singled out the performance:
"Veronica Cartwright is wonderful." — Alex Good, Alex on Film (2021)
Kaufman gives her the film's last human reaction shot. It does the work it does because Cartwright has spent the whole picture not panicking, and the final frame is where she finally does.
Cartwright through the late 70s
| Year | Work | Role |
|---|---|---|
| 1963 | The Birds | Cathy Brenner |
| 1963–65 | The Alfred Hitchcock Hour | Various |
| 1964–70 | Daniel Boone (TV) | Jemima Boone |
| 1973 | The Children of Times Square | — |
| 1978 | Invasion of the Body Snatchers | Nancy Bellicec |
| 1979 | Alien | Lambert |
| 1987 | The Witches of Eastwick | Felicia Alden |