Bonnie Bedelia makes the wife beside the leading man worth watching in her own right. We value her grounded dramatic work, though the films have not always given her characters enough room.
Fi1m perspective
Bonnie Bedelia makes us wonder what the woman beside the leading man is thinking. As Barbara Sabich in Alan J. Pakula's Presumed Innocent (1990), she gives us another person to study while Harrison Ford keeps Rusty difficult to read. We felt uneasy watching her, because we wanted Barbara's judgement of a husband we could not quite trust. Bedelia sustains that interest even when the dialogue has legal information to deliver. Pakula's care with his supporting actors pays off: we keep looking beyond the man at the centre of the mystery.
Her earlier film work offered a broader set of lives than the later succession of wives might suggest. She played Ruby Bates, a pregnant marathon dancer, in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), then took the lead as drag racer Shirley Muldowney in Heart Like a Wheel (1983). The latter marked a return to prominence, with Bedelia herself at the centre of a woman's working life.
John McTiernan's Die Hard (1988) gave her Holly Gennaro McClane, Bruce Willis's estranged wife, in a film driven by clearly staged action and the contest between Willis and Alan Rickman. We recommend it warmly, despite the foolish police business, but its considerable pleasures do not make it the fullest introduction to Bedelia. She has spoken of the limited character development in that sort of work. It is a fair reservation about a film whose central struggle leaves less room for her. Presumed Innocent asks us to attend more closely to Barbara, and gives us reason to keep doing so.
Television later supplied leading roles in The Division (2001–2004) and Parenthood (2010–2015), where she played family matriarch Camille Braverman. The repeated casting as wives and mothers can make her work look narrower than it is; she has spoken about the limited choice of parts. We would welcome more roles that let her character's concerns determine what happens next. Start with Presumed Innocent, if its solemn pace is no obstacle, and watch Barbara as closely as the legal proceedings.
Biography
Bonnie Bedelia is an American actress. She began her career in theatre in the 1960s, appeared in the CBS daytime soap opera Love of Life and made her film debut in The Gypsy Moths (1969).
Her film roles include They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), Heart Like a Wheel (1983), Die Hard (1988), Presumed Innocent (1990) as Barbara Sabich, and Needful Things (1993). She also appeared in Die Hard 2 (1990).
For television work, Bedelia received two Emmy Award nominations. She played the lead in the Lifetime series The Division (2001–2004) and starred as Camille Braverman in the NBC series Parenthood (2010–2015).
