Actress Kathy Bates is closing the chapter on her career.
Bates was already in retirement mode before agreeing to be on the show, as her acting career had consumed her, she told the newspaper. After feeling ignored due to an unnamed movie shoot that went “sour,” bringing her to tears, Bates told her agents she wanted to retire. “It becomes my life,” she said. “Sometimes I get jealous of having this talent. Because I can’t hold it back, and I just want my life.”
However, the 76-year-old put her retirement on hold a few weeks later when her agents sent her a script for the rebooted series “Matlock.” Bates recalls not being drawn to the original, which starred Andy Griffith and ran from 1986 to 1995. Upon reading the script, she resonated with her character, Madeline “Matty” Matlock, and felt called to the idea of “playing a woman out to right wrongs.”
“Everything I’ve prayed for, worked for, clawed my way up for, I am suddenly able to be asked to use all of it,” she said. “And it’s exhausting.”
Bates revealed that the show will be her final one: “This is my last dance.”
“There’s this funny thing that happens when women age. We become damn near invisible,” Madeline Matlock says in the pilot.
“It’s useful, because nobody sees us coming.”
Bates won an Oscar for her performance in the 1990 horror film “Misery” and Emmys for “American Horror Story” and “Two and a Half Men.” Even with her achievements, she finds it hard to celebrate, instead ruminating on the challenges and injustices she faced throughout her five-decade career.
“Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain,” she said to the New York Times. “Do I have the right to feel this pain? When I was given so much?”
Even when looking back at “Misery,” where she played Annie Wilkes, she feels disdain despite the career milestone.
“I never felt dressed right or well,” she said about doing publicity rounds during and after the film. “I felt like a misfit. It’s that line in ‘Misery’ when Annie says, ‘I’m not a movie star.’ I’m not.”
Bates’s Career
Born on June 28, 1948, in Memphis, Tennessee, Bates studied drama at Southern Methodist University, graduating in 1969. The following year, she moved to New York to pursue an acting career, working several odd jobs. She was cast in the 1971 comedy “Taking Off,” credited as “Bobo Bates” and didn’t film again until 1978’s “Straight Time,” where she starred opposite Dustin Hoffman.Bates had also secured roles on the stage during this time, appearing in productions such as “Vanities” in 1976, “Crimes of the Heart” in 1979, and “Fifth of July” in 1980. In 1982, she starred in Robert Altman’s “Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” alongside Hollywood stars Karen Black and Cher.
Her big breakthrough came in the 1990’s “Misery,” based on Stephen King’s 1987 book of the same name. Receiving critical acclaim, Bates won an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress–Motion Picture Drama. She went on to appear in 1991’s “Fried Green Tomatoes” and 1995’s “Dolores Claiborne.”
Bates received her first Emmy award for her guest appearance on “Two and a Half Men” in 2012, where she played the ghost of protagonist Charlie Harper. The following year, she received another Emmy for her role as Madame Delphine LaLaurie in the “American Horror Story” television series.
Bates will retire from acting following the launch of “Matlock,” premiering Sept. 22 on CBS and Paramount+.
