Warren Beatty of the film, he credited Hackman with giving the "most authentic performance in the movie, so textured and so moving," recalls Dunaway. He was impressed with Gene Wilder after seeing him in a play and didn't even need him to audition, in what became Wilder's screen debut. And Beatty had already known Pollard: "Michael J. Pollard was one of my oldest friends," Beatty said. "I'd known him forever; I met him the day I got my first television show. We did a play together on Broadway." "Bonnie and Clyde" went on to be a critical and commercial success, despite the
Faye Dunaway of that evil that she brings to it, I think that’s just major acting." Although the film became a cult classic as well as one of her most famous characters, Dunaway expressed her regrets for playing Crawford, as she felt "it was meant to be a window into a tortured soul. But it was made into camp." She also blamed the film for hurting her career and almost never agreed to discuss it in interviews afterwards. In 1982, Dunaway appeared in a television adaptation of Clifford Odets's dramatic play "The Country Girl" as the wife of a washed-up alcoholic singer