Faye Dunaway read her accounts of her Oscar-nominated performances as the taut, sexy, neurotic femmes fatales of "Bonnie and Clyde", "Chinatown", and "Network" is to learn from an expert about the instincts, collaborations, and compromises that go into great film acting". The following year, Dunaway was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and starred in the family comedy "Dunston Checks In", the crime thriller "The Chamber", which reunited her with her "Bonnie and Clyde" co-star Gene Hackman, and the directorial debut of actor Kevin Spacey, "Albino Alligator". Also in 1996, Dunaway returned to the stage, playing famed opera singer
Faye Dunaway Pauline Kael raved about Dunaway's performance, stating that she had reached new heights as an actress and surmised that it would be difficult for Dunaway to top her performance as Crawford. Vincent Canby also praised Dunaway, writing that ""Mommie Dearest" doesn't work very well, but the ferocious intensity of Faye Dunaway's impersonation does, as does the film's point of view, which succeeds in making Joan Crawford into a woman far more complicated, more self-aware and more profoundly disturbed than the mother remembered in Christina Crawford's book." Director Sidney Lumet stated that it was "a brilliant, an extraordinary performance. The courage