The death of country music star Loretta Lynn has already inspired an outpouring of tributes from friends, fellow celebrities and fans. Sissy Spacek falls into all three categories, having been personally selected by Lynn to star in the 1980 biopic, Coal Miner’s Daughter, based on her rags-to-riches life story. The actress won a Best Actress Oscar for playing the real-life Kentucky coal miner’s daughter, who died on Tuesday at her Tennessee home at age 90.
“Today is a sad day,” Spacek said in a statement to Yahoo Entertainment. “The world lost a magnificent human being. Loretta Lynn was a great artist, a strong and resilient country music pioneer and a precious friend. I am heartbroken. I send my deepest sympathies to her wonderful family, her friends, and her loyal fans.”
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Speaking with Yahoo Entertainment in 2018, Spacek discussed how she nearly turned down the opportunity to play Lynn in Michael Apted’s much-loved film, which also starred Tommy Lee Jones and Beverly D’Angelo. “Loretta would go on Johnny Carson all the time saying, ‘Sissy Spacek is gonna play me!'” recalled the actress, who rose to fame with roles in ’70s favorites like Badlands, opposite Martin Sheen, and the horror classic, Carrie. “I was very reticent about it, [because] I was going to be doing another film that had the same start date. I went to see Loretta at a show in New Orleans, and I was going to tell her, ‘”I’m very sorry, you’re a wonderful person and a great singer, but I’m not doing this.'”
“We missed the whole show because we were late, but she came out the back door in this flaming-red dress, and she was so mad because the drums had been too loud,” Spacek continued. “She was ragging on her band, and I was just dumbstruck. I thought, ‘I have to play this woman!’ And I’m so grateful that I did, because we’re still very close.”
Spacek also credited Lynn with encouraging her to sing all of the songs heard in the movie, which required a bit of a learning curve. “I remember my husband [legendary production designer Jack Fisk] would shut all the doors when I was rehearsing and my dog would howl — it was really not pretty,” she said laughing. “But I worked closely with Loretta. We stayed at a hotel in Nashville for about a week. We’d put the sheet music on lampshades with safety pins and we’d have our guitars, so we’d be walking around the room from one lampshade to another singing these songs.”
As the native son of a British mining community, Apted made a point of filming Coal Miner’s Daughter on location in Kentucky and Tennessee, and featured real Appalachian mountain residents in the film. “Loretta’s mother was played by a wonderful, well-known mountain singer named Phyllis Boyens, who has passed away also,” Spacek remembered in 2018. She also got to collaborate with Lynn’s actual musical team, including producer Owen Bradley, who passed away in 1988. It was his advice that finally helped put her fears about doing justice to Lynn’s music to rest.
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“One day I said to him, ‘Owen, I can’t do this song — I don’t have vibrato in my voice.’ And he said, “Loretta didn’t have vibrato anyway! She would just hold her hand up, and when she’d hold that note, she’d shake her hand!” Like a fool, I believed him, but it worked!” And she’s got the Oscar to prove it.
Coal Miner’s Daughter is currently available for rent or purchase on most VOD services
