Sissy Spacek honored at Maine festival Academy Award-winning actress gives sneak preview of latest film in Waterville

WATERVILLE – Sissy Spacek hasn’t changed that much since she wreaked telekinetic havoc on a high school gym in “Carrie.” Like most baby boomers, the 51-year-old actress has more gray hair, more lines in her face, and she carries a little more weight than she did in her 20s.

Yet, the open graciousness and the gentle intelligence that have marked many of the Academy Award-winning actress’s performances were evident when Spacek appeared at the Maine International Film Festival.

The actress received the festival’s fourth Midlife Achievement Award at a ceremony Sunday night before a screening of “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Spacek won an Oscar in 1980 for her portrayal of country music star Loretta Lynn.

“I guess it means that it’s half over,” said Spacek at a news conference late Sunday afternoon. “It’s always an honor to be recognized for things that you do.”

Spacek’s new movie, “In the Bedroom,” was shown Saturday night in a sneak preview. Many of the more than 500 people in the audience appeared as extras in the independent film, which was written and directed by Owls Head resident Todd Field. The film is scheduled to be released by Miramax in October.

“In the Bedroom” earned accolades at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Spacek and her co-star Tom Wilkinson were awarded a Special Jury Prize for their performances. Several reviewers who saw the film at Sundance forecast that the two would be nominated for Academy Awards next year.

Spacek said she “went way down deep” emotionally for “In the Bedroom.”

“I think as human beings we all have a complete realm of emotions,” she said, “but this one was very unrelenting. I felt like I was trying to keep myself underwater, emotionally submerged.”

Field told the audience Saturday night that while he loved directing, “I put pants on my [three] children by acting.” The 40-year-old filmmaker has appeared in “Eyes Wide Shut,” “Twister” and “The Haunting.” He also has acted in and directed episodes of the TV series “Once and Again.”

Field has outlined his filmmaking philosophy on a Web site devoted to independent directors.

“When I was child, I was obsessed with the great conjurers,” he is quoted as saying. “Not the guys that made an elephant disappear. People like Cardini – the magic, small, intimate, inches away. That’s what interests me about film. It’s the small moments. Not achieving larger than life status.”

“In the Bedroom” is that kind of movie. Shot from June 1 to July 7 last year in Rockland, Rockport, Old Orchard Beach and other midcoast locations, the film is about the grief that overcomes Matt and Ruth Fowler after their son and only child dies violently.

Based on the 1991 story “Killings” by Andre Dubus, the film shows ordinary people who struggle with a situation that compels them to do things they never imagined themselves capable of.

It is a quiet film, full of silences, but similar in tone to Spacek’s recent movies “Affliction” and “The Straight Story.” It is a far cry from the horror movie that rocketed Spacek to stardom 25 years ago.

Brian DePalma’s film of Stephen King’s first novel was released on Halloween weekend in 1976. To celebrate the movie’s silver anniversary, MGM Home Entertainment is releasing a special edition DVD next month.

The film made Spacek an international star and earned the then-26-year-old actress an Academy Award nomination. It also put King on the best-seller list and made the Maine native a celebrity in the publishing world.

In May, Premiere magazine brought together Spacek, DePalma and other cast members at the high school in Charlottesville, Va., where “Carrie” was filmed. The magazine called the event a “big, gossipy class reunion. Without the pig’s blood and the fire and the mayhem.”

Spacek posed for a photographer in a gym shower stall similar to the one that is in the movie’s opening sequence. This time, Spacek had her clothes on. The actress vividly remembered what it was like to be covered in fake blood for the famous prom sequence, where a bucket of pig’s blood was dumped on Carrie.

“The blood was like a mixture of Karo syrup with food coloring,” she told Premiere. “I had to keep it on for days. My arms would stick to my sides, and if I sat in a chair, I’d stick to it. They had someone following me around with a spritzer bottle so I could get loose from things.”

Like her “Carrie” co-star John Travolta, Spacek loves the rocky beauty of Maine’s coast. Unlike the actor, she and her husband, Jack Fisk, have not bought property in Maine. They do, however, live far from Hollywood on a horse ranch in Virginia. Fisk and the couple’s teen-age daughters, Schuyler and Madison, accompanied her to the film festival.

“I thought at the time that ‘Carrie’ would either finish us all off,” she said, “or something very interesting would happen. Who knew it would be such a cult classic?”

“We’re not going to breathe a word about how beautiful Maine is,” Spacek said. “We don’t want all the riffraff moving in.”