Show Business: Basic Spacek: Keeping Life Tidy

Uncanny—and that's just for openers. Sensual, wistful, fragile, spooky spring to mind, too. Just shy of 27, Sissy Spacek has already played such a variety of roles so smoothly that the only constant in her personality appears to be mutability.

In Badlands, she brought an unlikely but saving sympathy to the part of a Midwestern high school girl on an interstate crime spree with her boy friend. Currently, she is raising goose bumps, and even bringing a tear or two, as the put-upon heroine of Carrie, Brian De Palma's nightmare chiller about a young girl with telekinetic powers. For a little...

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