Technically, Dick Cusack, the patriarch of the clan, qualifies for the other column. He would be 97 if he were still alive, but he died in 2003. He was a Clio Award-winning advertiser, an Emmy Award-winning documentarian. It is, alas, nigh impossible to find out exactly what commercials he’d made, or even what he’d won his Clio for. However, he married a teacher named Nancy. Together, they had give children. One of them is the most famous and one of them is the most critically acclaimed, but all five children have done at least some acting, as Dick did himself as well.
His oldest daughter is Ann. She was followed by Joan and then Bill. (John’s Wikipedia page implies that John is the middle child, but Bill is.) Finally came Susie. Bill has even since married LaFern, who has herself done some acting and also produced 120 episodes of Dr. Phil’s podcast, which is a thing that has 120 episodes. All five children, plus LaFern, have IMDb pages; Bill and Susie do not have Wikipedia pages. Nor does LaFern. Probably Ann is the most notable of the remaining members of the family.
It’s true that they’ve all appeared with John or Joan now and again. However, none of them exclusively has. Aside from her work in Grosse Pointe Blank, among others, Ann is probably best known as the illiterate left fielder of the Rockford Peaches in A League of Their Own. It’s a minor but moving role, as so many roles in the movie are. Bill played Tony McCoy, hero of Bride of the Monster, in Ed Wood. Susie’s probably the least well known of the bunch; she appears to be the main character of a movie called Not Again!, but beyond that, mostly, stuff with her siblings.
Ann’s career might be worth its own retrospective. Dick’s likely would be if it were possible to find any specific details about his commercial work. However, realistically, they’re basically known as the remaining Cusacks. Even with Ann, there’s a certain sense of, “Wait, which one in Grosse Pointe Blank was she?” (Martin tells her he works at KFC.) Bill plays a waiter in that movie, and it’s much easier to remember the waitress who tells Martin that what he’s ordering isn’t an omelet than him. Susie, as established, barely has a career at all.
Hollywood, as we have discussed many times over the course of the columns, is not exactly unfamiliar with nepotism. It’s not exclusively true that the only way to have a career is to have a relative who has a career, and it seems unlikely that a Clio-winning dad is the most obvious path to stardom and Oscar nominations. Still, the Cusack family has carved out its own wacky little niche in the business, and if they aren’t all as well known as John or as talented as Joan, they’re still doing quiet, solid work as a family. Even if odds are pretty good that, if you’ve seen one Cusack, you’ve seen them all.
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