Mary Woronov

She went from Andy Warhol's Factory to Roger Corman's payroll, which is a shorter distance than it sounds. Mary Woronov worked with Warhol first, then spent the 1970s and 1980s as one of the most recognisable faces in American exploitation cinema, more than eighty films' worth, alongside stage work at Lincoln Center and off-Broadway and a steady run through mainstream American television. She is a writer and a figurative painter too, and she is better at describing that scene than most of the people who have published books about it.

Her gift is contempt. Not coldness, which is easy, but articulate, fully conscious disdain delivered at conversational volume: Calamity Jane in Death Race 2000, Miss Togar declaring war on rock music in Rock 'n' Roll High School, Mrs. Ulman in The House of the Devil, whose politeness is the frightening part. Directors called her when a scene needed somebody capable of looking at the other actors as though they had tracked something in on their shoes.

Her longest partnership was with Paul Bartel, seventeen films together, frequently as a married couple. They played the Blands in Eating Raoul and then strolled into Chopping Mall four years later as the same characters, a joke that only pays off for an audience that was paying attention. The later credits are cult curation as much as casting: The Devil's Rejects, The House of the Devil, Looney Tunes: Back in Action.