Anjelica Huston and Bette Midler both turned down the role of Annie Wilkes in Misery before Kathy Bates took it and won the Academy Award for Best Actress. This is the role that made Kathy Bates’ career.
Annie Wilkes is the main antagonist of Stephen King’s 1987 novel Misery and its 1990 Rob Reiner film adaptation. She is a former nurse and obsessive fan who rescues injured author Paul Sheldon after a car accident, only to hold him captive in her isolated home and force him to rewrite his latest novel according to her demands. Kathy Bates’s performance in the film, alternating between cloying adoration and sudden, violent rage, won her the Academy Award for Best Actress and turned the character into one of the most iconic villains in horror and thriller cinema.
Anjelica Huston’s decision to pass on Misery put her in competition with the actress who took the role: at the 1991 Oscars, Huston was nominated for The Grifters, and Kathy Bates won best actress for playing Annie Wilkes.
Huston explained her choice in 2019: “I did turn down that part but it was because I fell in love with The Grifters and wanted to do it passionately.”
Bette Midler also passed on the role and later said she regretted it. The screenplay she’d read still contained the foot-amputation scene from Stephen King’s novel. Director Rob Reiner said screenwriter William Goldman suggested Bates, who was then known chiefly for her stage work.
Misery, released in 1990, earned Bates her first Oscar. Huston already had an Academy Award for her supporting performance in Prizzi’s Honor, which she won in 1986.
Looking back on losing to Bates, Huston praised her performance: “But I actually thought, ‘Go girl.’ ‘Cause that was a very daring performance. She went full bullet.”
