Actress Anne Archer was spotted walking her dog in Los Angeles on Monday alongside her husband, television director Terry Jastrow. The 78-year-old Oscar-nominated star exuded an air of marital bliss during the outing, looking the picture of showbiz elegance.
Archer and Jastrow have been married for nearly half a century, having exchanged vows in 1979. Both are Scientologists, and Archer's son Tommy Davis, 53, was at one stage a high-ranking member of the church and an associate of Tom Cruise.
Breakthrough in Fatal Attraction
Archer remains most recognizable to fans to this day for her turn in the 1987 blockbuster Fatal Attraction alongside Michael Douglas and Glenn Close. The film turned erotic thrillers into a smash genre in Hollywood, which churned out a prolific supply in the ensuing years under directors such as Adrian Lyne, who made Indecent Proposal and Unfaithful.
In the movie, the Douglas character Dan indulges in a weekend-long extramarital romp with a woman named Alex, played by Close, that curdles into a psychological horror show when his attempts to discard her expose her as a deranged stalker.
Archer won the hearts of audiences for her gentle portrayal of Dan's wife Beth, whose inner steel rises to the surface when she becomes one of Alex's targets. Fatal Attraction bowed to thunderous success at the box office and earned a string of Oscar nominations, including for Close and Archer.
When Fatal Attraction propelled her to bona fide stardom, she described the film as "something I wanted to do and needed," in an interview with Bobbie Wygant.
"I wanted to be in a very good picture. I'd been fighting a long time. I've had a long career and it's been hard," she said. "I'm philosophical about these things now. You get beat around in this business long enough and you sort of get a pretty tough hide after awhile."
Hollywood Family and Early Screen Roles
Anne Archer was born in 1947 to a showbiz family, the daughter of The Danny Thomas Show leading lady Marjorie Lord and her first husband John Archer. Her father acted on TV classics such as The Twilight Zone, Bonanza, Lassie, and Perry Mason.
Her parents divorced when she was a little girl and her mother "was always in a show and on the road a lot," so Archer was often left in the care of her grandmother, though she "remained deeply attached" to Lord, she told Cigar Aficionado. Archer's own acting ambitions were ignited when she was six, but she "learned some hard lessons about Hollywood when I was still very young," particularly when her mother's screen career fizzled after The Danny Thomas Show.
"It very quickly happens that people start to typecast you as a wife," Lord explained. "And because I was so identified with Danny, after I left the show many actors refused to have me as their wife on screen or on TV."
Archer's entree to showbiz came in 1971 when she was selected to be Miss Golden Globe, the presenter at the eponymous award show, at a time when that position was always given either to a "nepo baby" daughter or to a son dubbed Mr Golden Globe.
She jobbed around on programs like Hawaii Five-O and Little House on the Prairie and slowly made her bones in the movies, acting with Chuck Norris in his action star breakthrough Good Guys Wear Black and Sylvester Stallone in his feature directorial debut, the pro wrestling drama Paradise Alley.
Archer was, however, "extremely conservative" about the 1970s vogue for undressing onscreen and cynical about the roles available to actresses of the era.
"If you're pretty, you've gotta be a sexpot and take your clothes off. So they want to cast you as a hooker," she recalled. "Or you can play the elegant, untouchable one and still take your clothes off. By way of choices, that was about it. Or, of course, you could be like Farrah Fawcett. You know: furniture."
Personal Life and Career Hits
She married one William Davis in 1969 and welcomed their son Tommy, but the relationship fell apart in 1977 during the gradual ascent of her career. It was during the 1980s that her ship came in professionally, thanks to her yearlong run on the popular soap opera Falcon Crest, and then to Fatal Attraction.
She demonstrated her formidable comic chops as a clown in the 1993 Robert Altman picture Short Cuts, which earned her a Golden Globe Award. Based on several works by Raymond Carver, the movie featured Archer in a dazzling ensemble including Robert Downey Jr, Frances McDormand, Andie MacDowell, Jack Lemmon, Julianne Moore, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lily Tomlin, and Tom Waits.
In the same period, she starred in two hit Tom Clancy adaptations, the 1992 release Patriot Games and its 1994 sequel Clear and Present Danger. Once again, Archer was slotted into the role of the understanding wife, this time opposite Harrison Ford as CIA alum Jack Ryan, decades before John Krasinski embodied the character for a new generation of audiences.
Stage Success and Recent Projects
Her 21st century career has included lauded stage performances in the UK, the first of them as Mrs Robinson in a 2001 West End adaptation of The Graduate. She played the title role in the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe play The Trial of Jane Fonda, which was written and directed by Archer's husband Terry Jastrow.
The show dramatized an encounter Fonda had with the veterans who picketed one of her film shoots because of her "Hanoi Jane" scandal during the Vietnam War.
"This is not just an American story; it is going to resonate," Archer told the London Evening Standard. "It is a tough play and it is about things that are still going on today, about wars we fight and the reasons why we fight them."
Archer has featured this year in Brilliant Minds, the NBC thriller starring Zachary Quinto, and recently held roles on the Hulu show The Dropout led by Amanda Seyfried, as well as the show Paper Empire with Robert Davi and Denise Richards.
