In playing Loretta Lynn, Sissy Spacek took her place in the pantheon of actors depicting real-life singers alongside Luise Rainer (as Anna Held in The Great Ziegfeld, 1936); Barbra Streisand (as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, 1968); Reese Witherspoon (as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line, 2005); and Marion Cotillard (as Édith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, 2007). To prepare for the role, Spacek, who Lynn specifically requested to play her, followed the country legend on tour and studied with her for an entire year at the singer’s Civil War-era mansion outside of Nashville, Tennessee. Becoming “as close as sisters," the actress soon began to “speak Loretta" and sing “along with her phrase by phrase until she made … Lynn’s inflection her own." Her efforts paid off with Spacek able to convincingly perform her own live singing consisting of such Loretta Lynn classics as “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” as well as the film’s celebrated title track. Promoting Coal Miner’s Daughter as far away as Beijing, China, Spacek conveyed to audiences not otherwise accustomed to country music a strong, indelible impression of an outspoken country star who sang about childrearing, relationships, and even birth control and, in the process, became a major feminist role model. As Dolly Parton would later write to the actress, “I hope you make millions of dollars from Coal Miner’s Daughter so that you can get a boob job and do The Dolly Parton Story."

Excerpt from “Best Actress: The History of Oscar-Winning Women”, by Stephen Tapert

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Sissy Spacek photographed by Ellen Graham in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1974

On location for the filming of “Ginger In The Morning.”

Ginger in the morning (1974)