Performance Profile: Lee Grant in "Shampoo" (1975)

Lee Grant's performance is one that has attracted attention from both sides of the love-hate spectrum, and remains one of Oscar's more peculiar winners. Her role as a horny, rich housewife, despite being the most underwritten, is rather interesting within the film.

Felicia is a character that's hard to really connect to or even really understand, and Grant fumbles with this already problematic situation. She's written as a selfish, bitchy, heartless woman and the problem is that she stays this way and never changes. Grant's Felicia never seems to be totally in sync with the rest of the film, and its because Grant stays on the same on the same note the whole time. Everyone else grows and changes except Felicia. In terms of characterization, there is little; except for pouty fussiness which never evolves into anything enduring or deep.

Despite all this, Grant does show flashes of Felicia's desperation and longing for something real and different. Her highlight is the resturant scene where she is really a hoot to watch, and her line readings are fantastic.

Overall, it's a performance that starts off fun and engaging, but loses steam and shrivels up into a into a shrill caricature.

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