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 a year turning down projects. She passed on a role in Alfred Hitchcock's final film, the comic thriller "Family Plot", which she later lamented. She returned to the screen in 1976 with the Holocaust drama "Voyage of the Damned". The story was inspired by true events concerning the fate of the ocean liner carrying Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba in 1939. That same year, Dunaway appeared in the Paddy Chayefsky-scripted satire "Network" as the scheming TV executive Diana Christensen, a ruthless woman who will do anything for higher ratings. She loved the script and later said this was "the