Louise Fletcher, the imposing, steely-eyed actress who won an Academy Award for her role as the tyrannical Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, died on Friday at her home in Montdurausse, France.

She was 88. The death was confirmed by her agent, David Shaul.

Fletcher was 40 and largely unknown to the public when she was cast as the head administrative nurse at an Oregon mental institution in the 1975 film version of Cuckoo’s Nest.

The film, directed by Milos Forman and based on a Ken Kesey novel, won the best actress trophy for Fletcher.

Fletcher’s acceptance speech stood out that night, not only because she teasingly thanked voters for hating her but also because she used American Sign Language in thanking her parents for “teaching me to have a dream”.

The American Film Institute later named Nurse Ratched as one of the most memorable villains in film history and the second most notable female villain, surpassed only by the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.

But at the time of the Cuckoo’s Nest release, Fletcher was frustrated by the buttoned-up nature of her character.

“I envied the other actors tremendously,” she said in a 1975 interview with The New York Times, referring to her fellow cast members, many of whom were playing mental patients.

Jazz great dies

Pharoah Sanders, a saxophonist who was celebrated for music that was at once visceral and spiritual, purposeful and ecstatic, died on Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 81.

The sound Sanders drew from his tenor saxophone was a force of nature: burly, throbbing and encompassing, steeped in deep blues and drawing on a technique to create shrieking harmonics.