Betty Buckley doesn’t see a difference between her work in theatre or film.
While the workspace might be different, she feels her job doesn’t change, no matter what role she is playing. “The internal work to create a character is exactly the same,” Buckley says. “It’s just about size, scope and playing space, so it’s the same.”
You may remember her most from her role as Abby in Eight is Enough. She also appeared in the 1976 movie version of Carrie and has done her share of theatre, including Cats and Sunset Boulevard, as well taking on a music career where she has recorded 16 solo albums. More recently the 69-year-old performer has been seen in Oz and The Pacific, as well as Pretty Little Liars and The Leftovers.
After taking a role in the M. Night Shymalan movie 2008 movie The Happening, Buckley was back working with him again in the movie Split, a movie that hit the theatres last year in the US, and Australia in January, and was released on DVD this week. Buckley said she was attracted to the script because it was very different from anything that she’d already seen of his, such as The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. “I personally really like the psychological theme because I’m interested in that,” Buckley said.
After studying the subject at college, Buckley said she was a real student of human psychology and had been interested since childhood. She even started working with a psychologist to do her own analysis. “I was fascinated by the subject matter of multiple personalities when I read The Three Faces of Eve and saw the film. I was pretty young, but just remember Joanne Woodward’s performance, and I was like, ‘whoa this is so cool, and people have these different personalities,’ and I really thought that was amazing. It was kind of eye- opening to me as a young person.”
Travelling to India a number of times helped evolve Buckley’s fasciation of the human mind to include comparative world religions and meditation. “The power of the human mind to affect us, either negatively or positively. I played a psychologist one other time in a TV film, I believe, more than once. I’ve been fortunate to play empathetic characters. My character, Dr Fletcher, does have that same kind of holding the cornerstone of truth and being the witness for the craziness surrounding her.” Buckley said even her role as the step-mother for four years in Eight is Enough was comparative to Dr Fletcher. “She was a similar, sympathetic, empathetic person.”
Buckley said she had been fortunate to work with some pretty great actors in the film business, especially in an industry where many kinds of actors are very closed. “Gene Hackman being one of my favourites and of course, Robert Duvall, one of the greats and Harrison Ford.” Co-starring in Split with X-Men actor James McAvoy, pictured above with fellow co-star Anya Taylor, Buckley said they hit it off from the beginning. “James McAvoy is just so open and available from the first moment you meet him. Coming from a theatrical background too, his work ethic, and his feeling about himself as an actor is very grounded. He’s a very spontaneous actor and it’s all about the immediate connection in the moment to moment reality. Not all movie actors are like that.”