Sheila Tousey: making a ghost of it - actress

Interview, March, 1994 by Henry Cabot Beck

"Ghosts can do anything," says Sheila Tousey, who, as the demonic Kiowa specter in Sam Shepard's metaphysical Western Silent Tongue, walks a weird line between the Incan Yma Sumac and the Medean Diamanda Galas. Tousey grew up a child of the Menominee and Stockbridge-Munsee Indians in Wisconsin and began her performing career as a tribal dancer.

Indelible as Sioux activist Maggie Eagle Bear in 1992's Thunderheart, she brings to her screen performances an unspecific, she brings to her screen performances an unspecific melancholy and a Kabuki-mask ironic calm; she's enigmatic, unnerving, and totally enchanting.