Atlantic City Cinefest will honor Golden Globe and Emmy nominee Bonnie Bedelia with the Lifesaver Award at the 11th annual film festival October 12 to 14. Bedelia will also host a screening of Die Hard to mark the 30th anniversary of the film, where she played Holly Gennero McClane, Bruce Willis’ wife. She also appeared in Die Hard 2. The screening occurs October 13 at 7:30 p.m. in Dante Hall, 14 N. Mississippi Ave.
In addition, Bedelia will be a panelist on the filmmaking panel at Dante Hall on Saturday October 13 from 2 to 3 p.m.
Bedelia received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress for her role as drag racer Shirley Muldowney in Heart Like a Wheel and Emmy nominations for her performance in the children’s special Locked in Silence and as guest actress in the series’ Fallen Angels episode, “The Quiet Room,” directed by Steven Soderbergh. In addition, she co-starred as Camille Braverman, the matriarch of the family in the television version of Parenthood, which ran for six years.
A native New Yorker, Bedelia made her professional debut as a child in a North Jersey Playhouse production of Dr. Praetorius, before nabbing a role as teen Sandy Porter in the New York-based daytime soap Love of Life, cast alongside Roy Scheider, Cicely Tyson and Christopher Reeve. During her stint on the soap, she appeared in several Broadway plays: Isle of Children, Enter Laughing, The Playroom and My Sweet Charlie.
Bedelia also appeared on episodes of The Defenders, Naked City and East Side / West Side and studied with Uta Hagen and with The Actors Studio. She relocated to Los Angeles where her stage roles included Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Glass Menagerie and The Seagull.
Bedelia made her film debut in John Frankenheimer’s The Gypsy Moths, followed by a stellar performance as a dirt-poor pregnant marathon dancer who pitches songs for pennies in Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? She spent much of the ‘70s doing TV, returning to the big screen for Heart Like A Wheel. She starred opposite Ed Harris and Max Von Sydow in Stephen King’s Needful Things, opposite Keanu Reeves in The Prince of Pennsylvania, for which she received a Spirit Award nomination and opposite Paul Newman in Fat Man and Little Boy. She chilled moviegoers as the deranged, murderous wife in Alan Pakula’s Presumed Innocent, co-starring Harrison Ford.
The actress found a niche in numerous television films with relevant social themes such as The Elizabeth Morgan Story and Any Mother’s Son, for which she received a CableACE nomination. She played a seductress in HBO’s Somebody Has to Shoot the Picture and an adulterous presiding court judge in the Showtime thriller Judicial Consent.
For four seasons, Bedelia starred as Captain Kate McCafferty on the hit police drama The Division, and later in HBO’s Big Love. She just completed filming a thriller, A Stone in the Water.
Bedelia is the mother of two grown sons, and has been married for 25 years to the actor, Michael MacRae.
Tickets for Die Hard and other films in the Atlantic City Cinefest go on sale soon. Check with Atlanticcitycinefest.org for details.
The Atlantic City Cinefest celebrates the art form of independent moviemaking. The festival has hosted Kevin Smith, Terry Winter, Robert Downey, Sr., Blanche Baker, Scott Rosenfelt, William Forsythe, Dominique Swain and Brian O’Halloran during the first nine years. Presented by Downbeach Film Festival, the Cinefest shows movies at Dante Hall Theater, 14 N. Mississippi Avenue and the Noyes Arts Garage, 2200 Fairmount Avenue. Both venues are managed by Stockton University.
