Over the course of four decades, Dale Dickey has appeared in more than 130 supporting roles in TV, on film, and in theaters. A Knoxville, Tennessee, native who began acting at age nine, she has worked alongside Jack Nicholson, Jeff Bridges, Sean Penn, Robert Downey Jr., and Toni Collette, among others. Her characters, always in service to the story, are singular creations. Many of them embody mental toughness and expose survivorship’s brittle edges. In the opening of 2016’s Hell or High Water, Dickey’s character, Elsie, a bank clerk, reveals a surprising subtext in a string of West Texas bank robberies as a gun is held to her head. Dickey’s tight exchanges, layered physicality, and masterful facial expressions give the film a distinctive texture. In part due to her performance, it went on to gross $37,999,675 worldwide, far outpacing its $12 million budget. 

In 2010’s Winter’s Bone, Dickey plays Merab, the matriarchal head of an Ozarks family. Acting alongside Jennifer Lawrence in her breakout role, Dickey delivers a riveting performance, portraying a character who confronts meth use, mental illness, violence, and impoverishment. Debra Granik, the film’s director, told IndieWire that “during the shooting of Winter’s Bone, Dickey had a revelation and explained that she didn’t perceive her character… as a stone-cold sadist, but that there was another layer to her.” This interpretation allowed Dickey to shun the pitfalls of a one-dimensional, dark character. Her instinctive acting gave the story a suspenseful complexity and won her the 2011 Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female.