NOTE: This article is only for the 1987 movie adaptation of Olivia Foxworth. To see the article for the original book, well as the remake movie version of her, go to Olivia Foxworth (2014).
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| “ | Your mother has come home after seventeen years to repent for her sins and for her crime. Not only against your grandfather and me, but against God! Your mother's marriage was unholy! A sacrilege! An abomination in the eyes of the Lord! She did not fall from Grace! She leapt! Into the arms of a man whose veins pulsed with the same blood as hers! Not a stranger, but her own uncle! And you, the children, are the devil's spawn! Evil from the moment of conception! | „ |
| ~ Olivia Foxworth to her grandchildren. |
Olivia Foxworth is the secondary antagonist in the 1979 Virginia Andrews book Flowers in the Attic.
She was portrayed by the late Louise Fletcher (who also portrayed Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Kai Winn Adami in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) in the 1987 film adaptation of the novel, and by Ellen Burstyn (who portrayed Sister Summersisle in The Wicker Man) in the 2014 remake.
Biography[]
1987 Film[]
After her son-in-law Christopher dies in a car accident, his children, 12-year-old Cathy, 14-year-old Chris Jr., and five-year-old twins Cory and Carry, along with their mother Corrine become penniless. Corrine takes her children back to live with her wealthy mother Olivia. Within minutes of their arrival, Olivia reveals herself to be a sadistic religious fanatic, who viciously whips Corrine for marrying Chris Sr., revealing that Corrine and Chris were cousins. Olivia makes Corrine show her children the horrific scars as a warning of what will happen if they break her rules.
She brought them in under one harsh condition: that she lock them in the guest room that leads up to the attic, so their deathly ill grandfather, Malcolm, doesn't know they exist. Due to their incestuous origin, she is very cruel to them, calling her own grandchildren "sinners" and the "Devil's Spawn", uses a whip on them, breaks Cathy's music box, and forcefully cuts Cathy's hair.
Any time the children express dissatisfaction with their treatment, Corrine gaslights them into thinking that there's nothing wrong with the situation and that everything will be okay as soon as she gets her inheritance. However, Corrine secretly begins conspiring with Olivia to murder the children after she discovers a clause in Malcolm's will that says she will lose the inheritance if she has children. Olivia agrees to go along with the plan, but motivated by cruelty rather than by greed like her daughter. When Chris finally stands up to her, she locks the children in a closet and leaves them to starve for several weeks, until she delivers donuts that Corrine has poisoned with arsenic.
2014 Film[]
Ellen Burstyn as Olivia Foxworth in the 2014 Lifetime adaption of Flowers in the Attic
In the 2014 film, she is portrayed as more of an anti-hero, as she does despise her grandchildren, however, she is not as malicious as her previous incarnations though she does go along with the schemes of their mother, Corrine Dollanganger. She takes in the grandchildren at the beginning, and tells them all they need to know about living there. When she catches Chris and Cathy together while the latter is in her underwear, she forces for the former to cut off the latter's hair. When he refuses, she drugs Cathy and places tar in her hair, forcing it to be cut. While all of this goes on, she tells them this is God's punishment for even existing, while Christopher often tries to prove God loves them.
Corrine eventually finds the children as nothing but obstacles in her way of a golden new life for her, and demands Olivia kill the children. She gives Olivia donuts with poison to feed to them, but just before Olivia sets them down, she gives them a warning, saying, "Don't eat them, they're bad for you." Unfortunately, the children do eat them, but Cory dies of arsenic poisoning. Olivia knows their mother wants to kill them, and shelters them from the truth for almost a year, until the three begin to be paranoid of being fed poison like their brother.
They find Mickey, the mouse their brother adopted, is dying after taking a bite out of the poisoned donuts. They are just about to open the door to escape when Olivia walks in, catching Christopher looking at her outside of their room. She demands they hand over the skeleton key they made, and just when she thinks Christopher will give it to her, it turns out to be a trick, and they run out and into the staircase. Olivia turns out to have claustrophobia, and is paralyzed with fear when they shut the door. Christopher realizes she will be trapped like this, and shuts both doors, turns out the light, and tells her God will punish her for her deeds. In the end, it was found she managed to overcome her fear and is found staring out of the window.
Trivia[]
- The 1987 adaption had an original ending filmed where Olivia tries to kill Cathy, Chris and Carrie with a butcher knife after realizing they crashed Corinne's wedding, only to be restrained and locked up in a broken elevator by her butler, John Hall. Olivia then sees the dead body of her caretaker (who fell to his death through the shaft after a fight with Chris) bleeding above her causing her to scream frantically (due to her claustrophobia). This scene is available on Blu-Ray.
- In the 2014 remake version, both Olivia and her daughter Corrine are not Pure Evil. Corrine redeems himself at the end of the series saving his daughter from a fire that victimizes her. Olivia, for her part, shows an abomination for Corrine's attempted murder of her children.
External Links[]
- Olivia Foxworth on the Pure Evil Wiki
- Olivia Foxwoth in the V.C. Andrews Wiki