Neal's film debut in "John Loves Mary" (1949) actually came out after she had burst upon the scene in King Vidor's adaptation of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" (1949) opposite Gary Cooper. Blonde, yet dark, and grownup beyond her years, Neal captivated Cooper, and their resultant affair generated unrelenting publicity, causing her a nervous breakdown and nearly wrecking his marriage. In the next few years, neither Warner Bros. nor Fox succeeded in making her a major star, despite able performances like the nice nurse who allowed Richard Todd to curl up in her lap in "The Hasty Heart" (1949) and the wise-cracking blonde in "The Breaking Point" (1950). She returned to New York for a Broadway revival of "The Children's Hour" (1952), followed that with an Off-Broadway production of "The School for Scandal" (1953) and acted on TV during this period. When she married the writer Roald Dahl in 1953, she relocated to Great Britain and began carefully selecting her roles.
Neal chose Broadway over Hollywood, appearing in "A Roomful of Roses" (1955) and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1956) before opening her second and richest cinematic phase dramatically with Elia Kazan's acid portrait of political demagoguery, "A Face in the Crowd" (1957), in which her character turned the tables on Andy Griffith's power-crazed bumpkin. It would be another four years before she would lend those cheekbones to George Peppard's high society "sponsor" in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961), but she would make her West End debut in "Suddenly Last Summer" (1958) and return to Broadway for "The Miracle Worker" (1959) in the interim. She delivered a powerful performance as the likable housekeeper assaulted by Paul Newman in "Hud" (1963), picking up a Best Actress Oscar for her troubles, and filmed two more movies ("Psyche 59" 1964, "In Harm's Way" 1965) before suffering a series of debilitating strokes during her fifth pregnancy that confined her to a wheelchair and interrupted her career.
Neal overcame partial paralysis and severely impaired speech in order to make a brilliant comeback in "The Subject was Roses" (1968). Though it earned her an Oscar nomination, her subsequent work has been intermittent and of no great consequence compared to "Roses" and the films prior to her strokes. Perhaps her most notable later role was that of Olivia Walton in "The Homecoming--A Christmas Story" (CBS, 1971), the original movie pilot for the "The Waltons" series. Neal's courage had carried through other personal tragedies, the death of her daughter Olivia due to measles at age 13 and the eight brain operations her only son required after being hit by a taxi as a baby. The CBS TV-movie "The Patricia Neal Story" (1981) dramatized her remarkable recovery from her disabilities (with Glenda Jackson portraying her), and she has remained an inspiration for bravely conquering tremendous obstacles. In 1988, she published "As I Am" (written with Richard Deneut), a plain-speaking, seemingly honest autobiography imbued with the warmth and friendliness radiated by her screen persona.