New York rent control politics are even more vicious than academic (because the stakes are so small) politics.

In the Big Town, it’s only the apartments that are small.

Latest case in point (via the New York Times):

For Faye Dunaway, Real-Life Role in Housing Court

She was a brazen bank robber in “Bonnie and Clyde,” the mysterious Evelyn Mulwray in “Chinatown“ and a scheming television executive in “Network,” for which she won an Oscar.

Now Faye Dunaway is a defendant in case No. 76667/11 in Manhattan housing court, just another rent-stabilized tenant facing eviction.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, her landlord claims that Ms. Dunaway, who pays $1,048.72 a month for a one-bedroom walk-up apartment in a century-old tenement building on East 78th Street, does not actually live there, but rather lives in California. The suit also names her son, Liam Dunaway O’Neill, whose father is the photographer Terry O’Neill, as a subtenant in the apartment.

Dunaway apparently resides in West Hollywood, but “does not appear to be living glamorously. The home in California is a nice but not flashy house on which she still carries a mortgage, according to the lawsuit. Her car is a 2007 Toyota Corolla.”

Many more dishy details in the Times piece. One question:

Maybe she should move to Chinatown?