Paula Prentiss

The Height That Scared Producers

Paula Prentiss stood five feet ten inches tall at a time when Hollywood's leading ladies were still expected to be petite so they wouldn't overshadow the leading man. In 1960 she signed with MGM before finishing her studies at Northwestern University. Her height and her deep voice didn't fit into an industry that wanted exact copies of Elizabeth Taylor.

She made her debut in Where the Boys Are with a role that demanded quick thinking and an unusual gift for comedy. Audiences connected with her because she didn't try to be perfect or delicate in front of the camera.

And the gamble paid off.

During the early years of the 1960s she piled up light comedies with an energy that many critics compared to the screwball actresses of the era. But her work pace was unsustainable. In 1965, while filming What's New Pussycat? in Paris, she suffered a nervous breakdown that kept her out of the spotlight for months. That episode changed the way she approached the business and made her far more selective.

The collapse of Paris and a retreat into suspense

'70s cinema offered her characters with more edge and less makeup. In 1974 she appeared in The Parallax View alongside Warren Beatty. It was a dry political thriller in which she provided the vulnerability the plot needed to move forward without gimmicks.

A year later came The Stepford Wives. Her performance as Bobbie Markowe is essential to understanding the sociological horror of that decade. She was paid less than her male co-stars even though she carried most of the film's dramatic weight alongside Katharine Ross.

It was the peak of her commercial career.

She married Richard Benjamin in 1961, and the two formed one of the most stable couples in the industry. They worked together on the series He & She, but she always preferred to keep a low profile when media pressure grew. So she decided to prioritize her family life over long-term contracts.

Maturity on the margins of the system

In 1981, she shot Buddy Buddy under the direction of Billy Wilder. It was her last major foray into studio comedy before the studio system changed completely. But the movie industry was no longer the same place that had welcomed her two decades earlier.

She spent a long time away from major film sets. She only accepted roles if the script truly interested her or if the director was someone she completely trusted. She never needed mass fame to prove her acting talent on stage or in front of the camera.

In 2016 she returned to the screen in I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. She played a horror novelist suffering from dementia in a production directed by Oz Perkins. The shoot took place in an isolated house in Ottawa, and her role wrapped in less than a week of technical work.