‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ nurse dies at 88

THE actress who won an Oscar playing Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has died aged 88.

Louise Fletcher’s portrayal of the cruel and calculating antagonist opposite Jack Nicholson’s rebel Randle P. McMurphy in the acclaimed 1975 film seared her into the annals of film history.

The American actress died at her home in France on Friday.

Fletcher was a virtual unknown when director Milos Forman chose her to star as a heartless, tyrannical head nurse at a mental hospital who controls inmates by depriving them of medication and food. It won her the Best Actress Oscar, but her career never really took off. She played a minor role on TV’s Star Trek: Deep Space Nine from 1993 to 1999.

The star, whose parents were deaf, divorced producer Jerry Bick in 1977 after 18 years of marriage. They had two sons.