Conchata Ferrell makes bluntness funny without making it foolish. We value her dry authority in supporting parts, though Berta in Two and a Half Men gives only a partial view of what she could do.
Fi1m perspective
A blunt line from Conchata Ferrell sounds as though she has already heard quite enough. That worldly impatience helps explain the frequent casting as nurses, judges and housekeepers, and the danger of asking her to supply the same toughness each time. Her early film work offered other possibilities, with a part in Sidney Lumet's Network (1976) followed by the lead in the frontier drama Heartland (1979). The latter is worth remembering whenever her career is reduced to a reliable supplier of sharp replies.
Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990) places her Helen in a carefully imagined suburban neighbourhood. Her straightforward manner is useful in a film whose fairy-tale setting needs people who feel recognisable, although the central performances do most of the emotional work. We were moved by Johnny Depp and Dianne Wiest because they make the tenderness feel earned, even when the plotting is blunt. Ferrell's presence is a reason to look beyond those leads and attend to the people around them. We readily recommend the film for its performances, with some patience required for the storytelling.
In Steven Soderbergh's Erin Brockovich (2000), she plays Brenda, another supporting part in a film held together by its leading performance. Julia Roberts carries the story of a filing clerk taking a utility company to court, and the film is shrewd about how such work actually gets done. Ferrell's practical authority fits that emphasis, though it would be misleading to recommend this chiefly as a Ferrell film. The predictable plotting did not much trouble us, because Roberts makes the work worth following. It is also a reminder of how much of Ferrell's film career was spent supporting someone else's story.
Wider recognition came with Berta in Two and a Half Men (2003–2015), a part she played across 212 episodes. At the audition, she argued for her own way of speaking rather than the Russian or Polish accent being sought. That preference makes sense of her appeal: the joke should sound like something the woman would actually say. The long-running part gave audiences more time with her dry delivery than those film appearances could. If Berta is all we know, Heartland is the sensible next stop.
Biography
Conchata Ferrell was an American actress. She graduated from Marshall University and began her career in New York theatre, where she won Drama Desk, Obie and Theatre World awards for her performance in the 1974 play The Sea Horse.
Ferrell appeared in films including Network (1976), Edward Scissorhands (1990), True Romance (1993) and Erin Brockovich (2000), in which she played Brenda. On television she was a regular cast member in several series and played Berta the housekeeper in Two and a Half Men (2003–2015). She received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2005 and 2007 for that role, and an earlier nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for L.A. Law (1992).
Ferrell died on 12 October 2020.
