Joanne Woodward as Eve White: Five Quotes About Her Iconic Role

Just three years after she began her movie career, Joanne Woodward was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. It was for her role as Eve White, a young Georgia housewife suffering from multiple personality disorder in the 1957 fact-based drama "The Three Faces of Eve."

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Here are five quotes about her role in this iconic movie about the struggles of living with a mental illness.

1. "…written, produced and directed by Mr. Johnson with a clean documentary clarity, and played with superlative flexibility and emotional power by Joanne Woodward in the main role. Miss Woodward, a comparative newcomer, stretches three ways convincingly."
–Bosley Crowther, The New York Times

2. "Woodward is solid and the entire film turns on her performance, which gets deeper and more convincing as the story opens up a bit. At first, writer/director Nunnally Johnson‘s script follows the utilitarian tone of Cooke’s narration. When Eve walks into a psychiatrist’s office with a problem, we’re already way ahead of her, and it takes a while for her husband to catch up. But things evolve from there, as does Woodward’s differing mannerisms (hindered sometimes by some really obvious music cues when she ‘changes’) and her evolving relationship with her doctor (Lee J. Cobb)."
– Eric Melin, Scene-stealers.com

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3. "…it's left to the cast to bring the film to life. And that Woodward certainly does, responding with what can only be described as a tour de force, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar."
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out London

4. "Joanne Woodward won her Oscar for her splashy performance in this psychiatric case history; she's a southern woman with two extra identities, a sex kitten named Eve Black and a compliant housewife named Eve White. Nunnally Johnson wrote, produced, and directed in that strange hybrid of the 1950s, black-and-white CinemaScope."
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

5. "In only her third silver-screen appearance, Joanne Woodward found gold — Oscar gold — via her Academy Award-winning performance in this psychological drama that casts her as Eve White, a mousy housewife whose peculiar behavior leads a psychiatrist, Dr. Luther (Lee J. Cobb), to discover that she suffers from multiple personality disorder. But just as Dr. Luther becomes acquainted with her other persona, a sexy party girl named Eve Black, he discovers that a third personality has emerged: Jane, an intelligent woman who provides a stark contrast to both the emotionally fragile Eve White and the lascivious Eve Black."
– Matt Brunson, Creative Loafing

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