In Sudden Fear, she portrayed a woman terrorized by a husband with murder on his mind. In Torch Song, she portrayed a bitter, lonely and hostile star who used and mistreated others. Joan may have assumed this role precisely because it was an accurate portrait of herself—of the woman she could acknowledge and deal with only through role-playing, the woman she could present to the world and then discard, as if by a kind of magic. But by choosing the roles and then living them out in an increasingly distant existence, sealed off from emotional connections to others, Joan was allowing herself no
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