Innate within Birmingham, Alabama to the minister & his married woman, two deaf, she was taught to speak by a hearing auntie, world health organization as well introduced her to acting. Fallowing attending a University of North Carolina, she traveled to Los Angeles, California, where she found act as a secretary by day and took acting lessons by nighttime. She began appearing around many television productions, but married Jerry Bick & took period off to raise her Deuce tykes; she yet divorced Bick, world health organization died inside 2004.

Around 1974, she returned to film in Thieves Like Us. Milos Forman saw her, and cast her when McMurphy's nemesis Nurse Ratched inside ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She too appeared within such films when The Cheap Detective, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Firestarter, Brainstorm, Flowers in the Attic'' and as Sebastian's aunty inside Cruel Intentions.

Fletcher was nominated for an Emmy Award for her recurring role on the television series Picket Fences. She too experienced the continuing role within Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the scheming double-faced Bajoran religious leader Kai Winn Adami.