Profile of KaDee Strickland on Famous Like Me

KaDee Strickland (born Katherine Dee Strickland on December 14, 1977 in Blackshear, Georgia) is an American film actress. After displaying interest in acting at a young age, Strickland commenced her studies, while working in minor roles in motion pictures by filmmakers such as M. Night Shyamalan and James Mangold. She gradually gained prominence and critical acclaim from 2003 onwards after significant parts in several successful mainstream films. Media sources in 2004 such as Todd Gilchrist, Mike Altamura, Matt Soergel and Clint Morris acknowledged Strickland as one of Hollywood's rising stars, and Ray Colbert thought her to be a "major player in the industry". On her career, Strickland herself commented, "it's been a dream. It really has. Everyone has been so focused and lovely and it's just wonderful...I'm gonna be whole hog with it and hopefully do it until I'm in the grave." Describing herself as a "method actor", Strickland has cited Jessica Lange, Holly Hunter, Diane Keaton and Jane Fonda as influences on her acting technique.

Early life and education

Strickland is the third and youngest child of Susan Strickland, a nurse and nursing instructor, and Dee Strickland, a former high school football coach and superintendent. She was raised in Patterson, Georgia, and had a job picking tobacco on a local farm for eight years. She took part in many extracurricular activities during high school, including the student council (which she was elected president of) and the cheerleading squad, and was also crowned Homecoming Queen three times through elementary, middle and high school. When she was a young child, Strickland had once watched the film Annie Hall, and recalled "wanting to be in that place, and being completely taken with the energy of those people. I wanted to be in it." However, a career in the performing arts had never been seriously considered by Strickland until her participation in a one-act play performed by students of her high school: "...the minute I set foot on stage, that was it. Destiny took over. There were no other options. I felt like I fit my skin, I knew what I was here to do", Strickland said.

After graduating from high school, Strickland successfully applied to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and during her studies there, she took a part-time job as a waitress at a local restaurant. She also interned at a casting agency, and one of the tasks she was given was to reading the lines at auditions for people looking for small roles in film and television projects in the area (a job that would land Strickland her first film role). After graduating with a Fine Arts degree from the University of the Arts, she was schooled in New York City for a time under the tutelage of Maggie Flanagan (who Strickland refers to as her "Jedi Knight"), who would instruct her students to watch films with the sound turned off, to gauge a good acting performance by how much one could understand the story. In late 2003, Strickland moved to Los Angeles, California, where she currently resides as of 2005.

Career

Strickland's career began with a brief appearance as a ghost in The Sixth Sense in 1999, a two-line part that she had received after impressing writer and director M. Night Shyamalan whilst reading lines for those auditioning for the film. The supernatural thriller, which starred Bruce Willis, was well received by critics and audiences alike. Of Shyamalan, Strickland said, "He is a lovely man, and one of the most focused I've been around...I still can't get over how tightly he ran his ship." That same year, she served as an extra in the unreleased independent film The Sterling Chase, and won a slightly larger part in James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted, an award-winning drama with Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie and Brittany Murphy as patients in the psychiatric ward of a hospital in the 1960s.

While staying in Philadelphia, Strickland was given various opportunities to take part in a number of other films in production in and around the city, including Rel Dowdell's Train Ride, a date rape thriller that was filmed in 1998, but was not commercially released until 2005 due to financing problems. Another of these was the crime drama Diamond Men with Robert Forster and Donnie Wahlberg, which opened to sparkling reviews; Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times declared it to be "a fantastic film, with a good cast". Some time after moving to New York City, Strickland was cast in Adam Bhala Lough's filmmaking debut Bomb the System, about a group of graffiti artists who choose to leave their mark on the city. Film Threat magazine's Eric Campos said "you still can’t deny the glaring talent of Adam Bhala Lough’s cast and crew", but the majority of critics were less enthused with the film, and it was not shown outside of film festivals until 2005.

Strickland's work was not limited to the big screen, however. She acquired stage experience through participating in theatre productions such as A Requiem for Things Past over the summer of 1999, and John Patrick Shanley's Women of Manhattan. She also acted in an episode of the television show Law & Order: Criminal Intent in December 2002, as well as nine guest appearances on All My Children; the latter enabled her to quit her job waiting tables. Additionally, in 2003, Strickland was cast opposite Eddie Cibrian in the pilot episode for a proposed small screen adaptation of John Grisham's novel The Street Lawyer. However, for reasons unknown, the show was never given a full season pick-up.

Strickland appeared in two romantic comedy films in 2003. Anything Else was written and directed by Woody Allen (Annie Hall), and featured Strickland in her largest role yet in a Hollywood production as the girlfriend of Jason Biggs (whom he snubs for Christina Ricci), but the film was greeted with dismal ticket sales and lukewarm reviews (though Strickland in 2005 referred to the film as her "big break"). The later release, Something's Gotta Give (starring Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton), was far more successful at the box office and with critics, although Strickland's part in the film was restricted to a single scene in which she played the partner of Dave (Paul Michael Glaser), whose young age raises eyebrows with Dave's ex-wife (Keaton) and daughter (Amanda Peet).

In early 2004, the independent film Knots premiered at the Gen Art Film Festival, with Strickland featured in a small part as a flight attendant, but then went straight to cable, bypassing a theatrical release. Soon after, Strickland had an equally minor role in the satirical comedy The Stepford Wives with Nicole Kidman. Strickland could be caught briefly in one of the first scenes of the film, as a contestant in one of the new game shows that Joanna Eberhart (Kidman) is producing. The film was disliked by critics and became a huge commercial dud.

Strickland's first lead role came when producer Doug Belgrad saw the dailies of her scene from Something's Gotta Give, and impressed by her work, cast the actress opposite Johnny Messner and Morris Chestnut in the jungle-set horror film Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, the sequel to Anaconda (1997). Strickland played an accomplished research scientist who travels to Borneo as part of an expedition team searching for a species of plant that is rumoured to have life-extending properties. Anacondas' worldwide ticket sales amounted to just over half of those of the original Anaconda, but the film was still a financial success. Strickland received kudos for her acting performance, though reviews mostly panned the production otherwise; Bruno Soto commented of Strickland and her co-star Salli Richardson that "both did what was asked of them and more. They deserve more that this B level affair". Julian Roman, in a slightly more positive summary of the film, said Strickland "certainly has the charisma to be a movie star".

Prior to the release of Anacondas, Strickland had demonstrated her advocacy of the arts, when she hosted the art debut of fellow actress Heidi Jayne Netzley. In an evening event held at the Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica, California, Netzley's series of soon-to-be-sold paintings (collectively titled Face Value) were on display to many art aficionados. Stella Monroe of Power Magazine declared the evening to be "engaging", and "a complete success".

Strickland's next project was another horror picture, The Grudge, director Takashi Shimizu's remake of his own Japanese blockbuster Ju-on: The Grudge (2003). The film was largely an ensemble piece (centred around an exchange student and care worker played by Sarah Michelle Gellar), and had Strickland play (in a role originated by Misaki Ito) an American businesswoman in Tokyo, Japan, whose brother (William Mapother), sister-in-law (Clea DuVall) and mother (Grace Zabriskie) come over from the United States to live in the city. Strickland clinched the role through a casting session with producer Sam Raimi, who picked her based on her work in footage for the then-unreleased Anacondas, and her nonchalance when working away from home for extended periods of time. The Grudge was an instant box office hit and quickly became one of the most profitable films of the year, and Strickland attracted more positive comments from film critics; Douglas Evasick said the cast "holds its own" in the film, describing Strickland as "sympathetic and relatable". Her presence in The Grudge and Anacondas led Phil Davies Brown to proclaim her as the new "scream queen", though Strickland dismissed this label: "If a script is well done...That is all it is really about for me. Good characters, scripts, and directors don't come around that often. So when they do, I like to go for it. The right thing is always welcome."

In the fall of 2004, Strickland embarked on what she described as "the craziest job I’ve ever had": the role of Robin in the Farrelly brothers film Fever Pitch, a baseball-themed romantic comedy with Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon, Strickland's co-star from Anything Else. The film opened in 2005 and was met with a mixed critical response, but Strickland herself received praise for her abilities as comedic actress. Critic Jamie Kelwick said that Strickland and her co-stars, Ione Skye and Marissa Jaret Winokur, gave "good performances" as the best friends of Lindsey (Barrymore). Ron Henriques concurred, describing Strickland as "great support" to Barrymore, and Cynthia Fuchs said the actress was "irrepressible" in her role. MSNBC's John Hartl, giving the film a negative overview, said Strickland "sometimes rescue[s] [the picture] from its plodding moments". The film was not a hit at the box office, but it helped to further raise Strickland's industry profile. As part of the promotion for Fever Pitch, she was interviewed on The Tony Danza Show, and also threw the first pitch at the opening season game of the Houston Astros, a Major League Baseball team.

In early 2005, Strickland was cast in the pilot episode for the fact-based television series Laws of Chance for ABC, based on the career of a spirited assistant district attorney based in Houston, Texas. Subsequent episodes were produced some months later, and the series is set to premiere in late 2005. Strickland's next film role is as laid-off stripminer Jason Patric's love interest in Walker Payne, an independently-financed drama set in the 1950s with Drea de Matteo, Sam Shepard and Bruce Dern, which completed filming in July 2005.

Filmography

Notes

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