This article first appeared in OscarWrap: The Race Begins.
When Alexander Payne called June Squibb to offer her a role in “Nebraska,” he had a simple pitch for the actress who’d played the wife of the title character in his “About Schmidt” a decade earlier. “I have another icon for you,” Payne told Squibb. “I gave you Jack Nicholson, and now I’m giving you Bruce Dern.”
In return, Squibb gave Dern all he could handle and then some. As Kate Grant, a long-suffering, tart-tongued wife fed up with her husband’s alcohol-fueled fantasies and rages, the 83-year-old actress steals scene after scene in “Nebraska,” whether she’s ripping into Dern’s Woody Grant or brazenly discussing her sex life with anybody who’ll listen, including her sons.