Candy Clark brings an unforced warmth to strange company. Her Mary-Lou in The Man Who Fell to Earth is a good reason to seek her out, particularly when Nicolas Roeg’s film threatens to keep everyone at a distance.
Fi1m perspective
Candy Clark gives us someone to approach in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Her Mary-Lou supplies warmth in a film that often keeps people at an uncomfortable distance. We felt less shut out when she was on screen, because that warmth made the human company seem worth staying with. David Bowie plays the alien visitor with a gentleness that makes the surrounding appetites feel threatening. Clark matters here without having to compete with his strangeness.
Her first film role was Faye Murdock in John Huston’s Fat City (1972), followed by Debbie Dunham in American Graffiti (1973), the part that established her. Debbie remains central to her reputation for making supporting characters memorable within an ensemble. She was frequently cast as free-spirited lovers, girlfriends and burnouts, roles that offer plenty of scope for overplaying. The natural, unforced presence that distinguishes her work is particularly useful when a character could so easily become a collection of quirks.
Supporting film work and television guest appearances continued through the 1980s and beyond. She played Kate in Blue Thunder (1983) and Carol Fisher in David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007), while television work included Criminal Minds and Twin Peaks: The Return (2017). Science fiction, horror and crime recur across the work, giving her opportunities for emotionally intense or eccentric parts. The reservation about this later career is the scarcity of leading roles, rather than anything inherently limiting about working in those genres.
Roeg puts her warmth to particularly good use: Mary-Lou matters in a film whose distance from people can become wearying. Bowie’s vulnerability gives us reason to worry about the visitor, and Clark makes the human company less forbidding. For all she contributes, the wandering second half still asks for more patience than it sometimes earns. We recommend it with that caveat; liking her performance does not oblige us to excuse the storytelling. Begin with Mary-Lou, but leave the demand for tidy science fiction for another evening.
Biography
Candy Clark is an American actress and model. Born Candace June Clark on 20 June 1947 in Norman, Oklahoma, she grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, and began her career with modelling in New York before her first acting role in 1972.
She is known for her performance as Debbie Dunham in American Graffiti (1973), for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and as Mary-Lou in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Her other film credits include Blue Thunder (1983), Cat's Eye (1985), The Blob (1988), Zodiac (2007) and The Informant! (2009).
Clark has also appeared in television series including Criminal Minds and as Doris Truman in Twin Peaks (1990).
