Coal Miner's Daughter

Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)

She became a singer because it was the only thing she could do. She became a star because it was the only way she could do it.

Biography of Loretta Lynn, a country and western singer that came from poverty to fame.

Date of release
1980-03-07
TMDB
7.2 / 10 (295)
Runtime
2h 5m
Genres
Music, Drama, History
Director
Michael Apted

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Kentucky
  • Awards: 2 · Nominations: 7. Including: Academy Award for Best Actress; National Board of Review: Top Ten Films

Coal Miner's Daughter is a 1980 American biographical musical film directed by Michael Apted and written by Tom Rickman. It follows the story of country music singer Loretta Lynn from her early teen years in a poor family and getting married at 15 to her rise as one of the most influential country musicians. Based on Lynn's 1976 biography of the same name, co-authored with George Vecsey, the film stars Sissy Spacek as Lynn. Tommy Lee Jones, Beverly D'Angelo and Levon Helm are featured in supporting roles. Country musicians Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, and Minnie Pearl make cameo appearances as themselves.

Production

Lynn chose Spacek to portray her, making the decision based on a photograph of the actress despite being unfamiliar with her films, a story Spacek recounts in a DVD audio commentary for the collector's edition of the film. Initially, Spacek was reluctant to participate, and asked to do her own singing in the film in hopes of scaring the studio from pursuing her for the role.

In her 2012 memoir My Extraordinary Ordinary Life, Sissy Spacek states that she became fast friends with Loretta Lynn and worked to emulate her unique accent and speech patterns by spending an afternoon tape-recording the singer while she told stories of her life, some of which made it into the script. She then listened to the tapes and repeated the lines until she captured her own version of Lynn.

The locations included Blackey, Eolia, Flatgap, Bottom Fork, Redfox in Knott and Letcher Counties in Kentucky; and Pardee, a former coal camp on the Virginia side of Black Mountain. Interiors of Lynn's childhood home were shot in a warehouse in Norton, Virginia. Scenes were also shot in Loretta Lynn's Madison, Tennessee, home on Barbara Drive.

The replica of Lynn's home in Butcher Hollow, built at Bottom Fork, Letcher County, Kentucky, was burned by arsonists. It was on the front porch of that house that Levon Helm, drummer and singer of the rock group The Band, made his acting debut as Lynn's father.

In an interview with Merv Griffin broadcast on November 7, 1978, Loretta Lynn said that Harrison Ford had been originally cast.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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