Patricia Arquette: Is she the future Scream Queen?

Patricia Arquette has received some accolades recently thanks to her performances in Showtime’s series Escape at Dannemora and Hulu’s The Act. If we look back at her history, she has quite a few horror movies and thrillers on her resume.

Patricia Arquette is part of a family of actors; her siblings are Rosanna, David and Alexis, and there are a vast number of acting credits between the three of them. David was, of course, featured in all of the Scream movies as Dewey, Alexis and David were both in the movie version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Rosanna is best known for appearing in Desperately Seeking Susan alongside Madonna.

Patricia’s feature film debut was in 1987’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, the third highest-grossing film in the franchise (behind Freddy vs Jason and NMES 4). It is also the sequel most beloved by fans of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

Although her character was the Final Girl, she chose not return for the sequel, so Tuesday Knight played Kristen in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. After that, Patricia’s career took off, and she managed to stay busy for many years.

From 1987 until 2003, Arquette made at least one movie every year, and she remains relevant currently. Many of her movies have fit into the horror or horror sub-genres: True Romance, Ed Wood, Lost Highway, Nightwatch, Stigmata, and The Badge.

Patricia Arquette – A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors – Courtesy New Line Cinema

Despite her movie success, she stayed active on television as well, appearing in episodes of Tales From the Crypt and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.  Then came the series Medium, which ran from 2005 until 2011.

She won an Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy Award for her role as psychic Allison DuBois in Medium. After the series was cancelled by NBC in 2010, CBS picked it up and ran it for another two seasons. The network later cast Arquette in their series CSI: Cyber, in which she played an FBI agent working on internet-based crimes.

Patricia Arquette – Medium – Courtesy Picturemaker Productions

She has received a lot of critical acclaim for her two most recent projects, both of which are true crime related stories. For Escape to Dannemora, she donned brown contact lenses and gained 40 pounds for her role of Tilly Mitchell, who helped two men escape from Clinton Correctional Institute (where she worked at the time).

She put those extra 40 pounds to work again to play Dee Dee Blanchard in Hulu’s The Act, based on the bizarre murder of Blanchard. Blanchard’s daughter Gypsy Rose was wheelchair bound, mentally disabled and suffered from asthma, cancer and Muscular Dystrophy, and the two were showered with gifts, trips and money from people who felt sorry for them.

Patricia Arquette – The Act – Courtesy Hulu

The shocking truth was only discovered when Dee Dee was found murdered in her bed in 2015. While townspeople were worried about the “kidnapped” teenager, law enforcement was discovering that Dee Dee had been lying about the state of Gypsy’s health.

As it turned out, Gypsy was not mentally or physically disabled, although she did have some health issues caused by her mother’s insistence that she have unnecessary surgeries and be put on multiple medications. Dee Dee, as it turns out, suffered from Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, and her daughter’s boyfriend had murdered her. Not only that, Gypsy had planned the murder.

The entire story was told in the HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest, and it is fascinating. The Act consists of eight episodes, and it is expected to return for a second season.

So, with all of the creepy, murderous roles Patricia Arquette has played over the years, could she be our next Scream Queen? It looks like her next project will be voice acting in Pixar’s upcoming Toy Story 4, but if she continues on her current winning streak, who knows what may be looming on the horizon for Arquette.

Do you think Patricia Arquette could be the next big horror actor? Who would you nominate as America’s newest Scream Queen? Let us know in the comments section!