Faye Dunaway reveals hard Hollywood life in bombshell doc: Bipolar disorder, alcoholism — and being ‘difficult’
A hair was standing up on Faye Dunaway’s head.
The Hollywood legend was filming a restaurant scene for the 1974 movie “Chinatown,” opposite Jack Nicholson, but production kept being halted by a stubborn follicle.
“It was a very tense moment,” Dunaway, 83, says in the new documentary “Faye.” “I have naturally curly hair, so my hair doesn’t want to do what another person tells it to do.”
Hairspray wasn’t helping either. So, hotshot director Roman Polanski brusquely intervened.
“Roman literally walks around and pulls the hair out of Faye’s head,” “Chinatown” assistant director Hawk Koch remembers in the doc.
“I’ve been around a long time — even then I’d been around a long time — and I’ve never heard some of those words.”
But there were far bigger problems roiling deep down than a diva getting heated with her director.
Dunaway, the “Network” and “Bonnie and Clyde” star who’s long had a reputation in Tinseltown for being “difficult,” candidly reveals in the film, which starts streaming Saturday on Max, that her more egregious behavior over the years was due to suffering from bipolar disorder, manic depression and alcoholism.
“I had periods where I was very depressed, and I was very moody and I actually have, we might as well say, a bipolar diagnosis,” Dunaway says. “You can be up high, you can be manic, you can be very depressed.”
The actress added that Polanski’s pluck was “enough to set off the manic depression. It was offensive. You don’t do that.”
Putting a button on the fracas, the Oscar winner said: “After that hair incident, Jack nicknamed me ‘Dread’ — the Dreaded Dunaway. He still to this day calls me Dread, and I love it.”
That wasn’t the only drama during the noir shoot. Dunaway also became obsessed with the lip balm brand Blistex.
“I can’t speak without it,” she admits.
Koch remembers that “Lee Harmon, who was our great makeup man, had a tube of Blistex, and between every shot he’d have to put Blistex on her lips. It was her security blanket. But for Roman and for the rest of us, oy vey, what a pain in the ass.”
Dunaway’s outbursts became much worse over the years, and spilled out into newspaper headlines.
Actress Rutanya Alda, who played the aggrieved housekeeper Carol Ann in 1981’s Joan Crawford drama “Mommie Dearest,” said she was terrified of the lead during filming.
“She was scary,” Alda says in the doc.
“She was frightening. I was on the edge of my seat sometimes thinking, ‘Am I gonna get fired?’ And [director Frank Perry] would remind me: ‘Don’t do this or you’re gonna get fired.’ From the beginning. ‘Don’t look so good, or I’m gonna fire you, and I have no control over this.’ So, who was in charge? I mean, it’s a terrible way to work thinking you’re gonna get fired at any time.”
Dunaway chalked up Alda’s negative perception of her to how Crawford was portrayed in the script.
“Well, that’s because the character was written fearful, I suppose,” she said.
In 2019, The Post broke the news that Dunaway had been fired from the Broadway-bound show “Tea at Five,” in which she played Katharine Hepburn, for creating a “hostile” and “dangerous” working environment backstage.
“The July 10 performance was canceled moments before curtain because Dunaway slapped and threw things at crew members who were trying to put on her wig,” sources told The Post’s Michael Riedel at the time.
Dunaway explains her epic Beantown blowup in the doc.
“I didn’t feel I was right for it because Katharine Hepburn’s New England and I’m from the South. And so there is such a different sensibility that I was worried about my being able to really play it,” Dunaway began.
“And it began to make me more and more irritated. And I’m pretty sure — I know — that was the bipolar [disorder] kicking in.”
Dunaway’s son Liam Dunaway O’Neill, whom she adopted with photographer ex-husband Terry O’Neill, recalls the theater gig in Boston getting messy.
“Slowly as the shows went on, she started losing her temper, she started acting out,” Liam, 44, says in “Faye.” “Her demons kind of got a hold of her, and she was fired from it and they canceled it. And that was that.”
After departing the production, Dunaway sought out doctors who prescribed medications that she says have “helped” her.
“I am quieter,” she said. “But throughout my career people know that there were tough times. I don’t mean to make an excuse for myself. I’m still responsible for my actions. But this is what I came to understand was the reason for them.”
Dunaway also reveals in “Faye” that she is an alcoholic.
“I went through a period where I had problems with alcohol,” the actress said. “As did my father. It’s an inherited thing. I’m in [a] program, and I have been for about 15 years.”
Today, the Hollywood icon resides in New York City, where she began her career treading the boards of Broadway and Lincoln Center. She is most concerned with her role as a mother and new grandmother.
“She started off as a normal person trying to be famous,” Liam said, “and is ending as a famous person trying to be normal.”
