What You Probably Don't Know About Andie MacDowell

This content was paid for by Quibi and created by Looper.

It may be the new kid on the block when it comes to streaming platforms pushing out original content, but Quibi has been attracting some of the biggest stars and best actors in the business. The upcoming wilderness thriller Wireless is no exception. The series follows a college student (Tye Sheridan) who turns to his phone for salvation after crashing his car on a deserted mountain road in Colorado. Among the supporting cast is actress and model Andie MacDowell.

Fans of early '90s blockbuster cinema will recognize MacDowell from her roles in Groundhog's Day and Four Weddings and a Funeral, as well as her work with Wireless executive producer Steven Soderbergh. In fact, MacDowell starred in Soderbergh's first-ever feature film, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, which also helped launch her career as a movie star.

Before tuning in on September 14 to see her latest, let's take a look at some of the highlights you may have missed from the nearly 40-year career of Andie MacDowell.

While Sex, Lies, and Videotape is the movie that helped make Andie MacDowell a movie star, it wasn't her first film. That would be Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. This adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' stories saw MacDowell playing the part of Jane, the high-society woman who falls in love with the wild man. Both MacDowell and Christopher Lambert, who plays Tarzan, were untested actors when they were hired for the film. Director Hugh Hudson told the New York Times, "It was essential to cast unknowns as both Tarzan and Jane."

Being cast as a lead sounds like a dream first role for any actor, but MacDowell didn't get to enjoy the fruits of her labor. After the film finished shooting, it was decided that her natural southern accent wasn't right for the part, and all of her lines were dubbed over by Glenn Close.

The dubbing debacle made MacDowell the target of industry ire. As she told Movieline in a 1996 interview, "When I heard the news, I was in my hotel room alone... I didn't deceive myself for one minute about what the media was going to do with it or what people in the business were going to think. I said to myself, 'Either I jump out that window out of humiliation and embarrassment or I fight.' The choice was there: die or fight."

While she doesn't get remembered with quite the same cultural reverence as Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan, for a few years in the '90s, MacDowell was a bonafide superstar. After the disappointment of Greystoke, the actress' career was mostly dormant until 1989's Sex, Lies, and Videotape. The movie was a huge success with critics and won the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. After her initial acting embarrassment years prior, MacDowell was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture — Drama.

The success of Sex, Lies, and Videotape gave MacDowell's career a major boost. In the following years, she starred in crowd-pleasing comedies like Green Card and Groundhog's Day, as well as critically lauded indies such as Robert Altman's Short Cuts. According to her interview in Movieline, she was considered for even more huge projects during this time, including Ghost and Silence of the Lambs. Of the latter, MacDowell implied that she dismissed the part because she found the movie's subject matter to be too disturbing, but said, "It was a very challenging role and to miss the opportunity to have someone as talented as Jonathan Demme directing you is a great loss for an actress."

Missed opportunity or no, MacDowell had plenty of her own successes. In 1994 she pulled off the rare feat of starring in back-to-back number one movies when her female-centric western Bad Girls took the top spot at the box office, knocking Four Weddings and a Funeral, also starring MacDowell, down to the number two position.

Even after her career left the "back-to-back number one movies at the box office" phase, MacDowell continued to work steadily throughout the '90s and '00s. During that time she took on roles as diverse as Miss Piggy's workplace rival in Muppets from Space and a wealthy Southern socialite who receives an unexpected visit from a group of road-tripping strippers in Magic Mike XXL. Of all the movies and TV series she appeared in, MacDowell never dipped her toes into the world of horror — that is, until 2019's celebrated horror-comedy Ready or Not.

In Ready or Not, MacDowell plays the warm but terrifying matriarch of a wealthy family that only welcomes new in-laws after they partake in a game that could have life-or-death consequences. When asked by Nightmarish Conjurings about her first foray into the genre, MacDowell said, "I have to say, I haven't been a person that goes to like every horror movie — I've seen some but now I'm a huge fan, more so than I was before after doing this. I loved the script, I thought it was amazing and the humor, that's what appealed to me the most, as well as the psychological thread that goes through the whole movie."

When asked if she would return to the world of horror, MacDowell said, "I would love to! I'm a huge fan now and I think it's so much fun." Perhaps MacDowell's newfound appreciation for the genre is what lead to her taking on a part in the Quibi thriller Wireless. Either way, we look forward to seeing the veteran actress when the series premieres on September 14.