Sylvia Miles

Miles got her start on stage in 1947, and it wasn't until 1954 that she made the jump to television — with her film debut arriving in 1960 in the gangster drama *Murder, Inc.* (Wikipedia). Early days, in other words, weren't overnight. She spent years building craft before Hollywood gave her a proper look. The breakthrough, when it came, was almost absurdly efficient. Her role in *Midnight Cowboy* (1969) — a scene that lasts roughly six minutes, in which she plays a brash, aging socialite who picks up Jon Voight's naive hustler Joe Buck — earned her a Best Supporting Actress nomination from the Academy. She didn't win, but the nomination announced something: that Miles could do more with less screen time than most actors do with an entire film. The 1975 nomination for *Farewell, My Lovely*, a neo-noir adaptation starring Robert Mitchum, confirmed it wasn't a fluke. Eight minutes that time. Another nomination. What followed was a long, eclectic middle period — roles in *92 in the Shade*, *Critical Condition*, and *Crossing Delancey* (1988), plus that memorable turn as Meryl Streep's mother in *She-Devil* (Wikipedia). Oliver Stone cast her as Dolores the Realtor in *Wall Street* (1987), and when Stone returned to that world for *Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps* in 2010, Miles came back too. She was also the subject of a PBS documentary titled *The Emancipated Woman of the 70s*, which — honestly — feels like a title that barely scratches the surface of who she actually was as a public figure in New York (Wikipedia). Her career ran sixty-two years in total, from 1947 to her death in 2019.