Shirley MacLaine Biography

Shirley MacLean Beaty (born April 24, 1934), known professionally as Shirley MacLaine, is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author. She has won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy twice, for her roles in The Apartment and Irma la Douce, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Drama twice for Terms of Endearment and Madame Sousatzka. She was honored with the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1998. She was nominated for an Academy Award five times before winning the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1983 for her role as Aurora Greenway in Terms of Endearment. She won the 1976 Emmy Award for Outstanding Special " Comedy-Variety or Music for Gypsy in My Soul. Her younger brother is Warren Beatty. She is known for her New Age beliefs and interest in spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career. In 2012 she was honored with the 40th AFI Life Achievement Award, the highest honor for a career in the US film industry, by the American Film Institute.

Early life

Named after Shirley Temple, Shirley MacLean Beaty was born in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a professor of psychology, public school administrator, and real estate agent, and her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a drama teacher originally from Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada; MacLaine's grandparents were also teachers. Her parents raised their children as Baptists. McLaine's younger brother is the actor/writer/director Warren Beatty. Her uncle (her mother's brother-in-law) was A. A. MacLeod, a Communist member of the Ontario legislature in the 1940s. While she was still a child, Ira Beatty moved his family from Richmond to Norfolk, and then to Arlington and Waverly, eventually taking a position at Arlington's Thomas Jefferson Junior High School. She played baseball on a team where all the other players were boys. She even held the record for most home runs, earning the nickname "Powerhouse".

She had very weak ankles as a toddler, so her mother decided to enroll her in ballet class at the age of three. This was the beginning of her interest in performing. Strongly motivated by ballet, she never missed a class. In classical romantic pieces like Romeo & Juliet and Sleeping Beauty, she always played the boys' roles due to being the tallest in the group and the absence of males in the class. She got to play a substantial female role as the fairy godmother in Cinderella. While warming up backstage, she broke her ankle, but proceeded to dance the role all the way through. MacLaine ultimately decided that professional ballet wasn't for her because she had grown too tall and was not good enough to make it a career. She also claimed she didn't have the ideal body type"?she didn't have the requisite "beautifully constructed feet" (high arches, high insteps and a flexible ankle). Nor was she able to acquire perfect technique. She also found ballet too limiting. After leaving ballet, she pursued other forms of dancing and acting.

She attended Washington-Lee High School, where she was on the cheerleading squad and acted in the school's productions. The summer before her senior year, she was in New York to try acting on Broadway with some success. After she graduated, she returned and within a year she became an understudy to actress Carol Haney in The Pajama Game; Haney broke her ankle, and MacLaine replaced her. A few months after, with Haney still out of commission, film producer Hal B. Wallis was in the audience, took note of MacLaine, and signed her to work for Paramount Pictures. She later sued Wallis over a contractual dispute, a suit that has been credited with ending the old-style studio star system of actor management.

Career

MacLaine made her film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry (1955), for which she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year " Actress. In 1956, she had roles in Hot Spell and Around the World in 80 Days. At the same time she starred in Some Came Running, the film that gave her first Academy Award nomination " one of five that the film received " and a Golden Globe nomination. Her second nomination came two years later for The Apartment, starring with Jack Lemmon. The film won five Oscars, including Best Director for Billy Wilder. She later said, "I thought I would win for The Apartment, but then Elizabeth Taylor had a tracheotomy." She starred in The Children's Hour (1961) also starring Audrey Hepburn and James Garner, based on the play by Lillian Hellman and directed by William Wyler (Ben-Hur). She was again nominated, this time for Irma la Douce (1963), which reunited her with Wilder and Lemmon. Don Siegel, her director on Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) said of her: "It's hard to feel any great warmth to her. She's too unfeminine and has too much balls. She's very, very hard."

In 1975, she received a nomination for Best Documentary Feature for her documentary film The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir. Two years later, she was once again nominated for The Turning Point co-starring Anne Bancroft, in which she portrayed a retired ballerina much like herself. In 1978, she was awarded the Women in Film [[Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards#THE CRYSTAL AWARD|Crystal Award]] for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry. In 1980, she starred in A Change of Seasons alongside Anthony Hopkins. The pair famously didn't get along, with Hopkins saying of MacLaine: "[S]he was the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with." In 1983, she won an Oscar for Terms of Endearment. The film won another four Oscars; one for Jack Nicholson and three for director James L. Brooks. In 1988, MacLaine won a Golden Globe for Best Actress (Drama) for Madame Sousatzka.

She continued to star in major films, such as Steel Magnolias with Julia Roberts and many other stars. She made her feature-film directorial debut in Bruno, MacLaine starred as Helen in this film, which was released to video as The Dress Code. In 2007, she completed Closing the Ring, directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Christopher Plummer. Other notable films in which MacLaine has starred include Sweet Charity (1968), Being There (1979) with Peter Sellers, Postcards from the Edge (1990) with actress Meryl Streep, playing a fictionalized version of Debbie Reynolds with a screenplay by Reynolds's daughter, Carrie Fisher, Used People with Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates, Guarding Tess (1994) with Nicolas Cage, Mrs. Winterbourne (1996), with actress and talk show host, Ricki Lake and actor Brendan Fraser, Rumor Has It? (2005) with Kevin Costner and Jennifer Aniston and In Her Shoes with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette.

MacLaine has also appeared in numerous television projects including an autobiographical miniseries based upon the book Out on a Limb, The Salem Witch Trials, These Old Broads written by Carrie Fisher and co-starring Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, and Joan Collins, and Coco, a Lifetime production based on the life of Coco Chanel. She had a short-lived sitcom called Shirley's World. She appeared in the third season of the British drama Downton Abbey as Martha Levinson, mother to Cora, Countess of Grantham.

MacLaine has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1165 Vine Street and in 1999 was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival.

Personal life

MacLaine was married to businessman Steve Parker until their divorce in 1982. They had a daughter, Sachi. In April 2011, while promoting her new book, I'm Over All That, she revealed to Oprah Winfrey that she had an open relationship with her husband. According to her, she had had relationships with prime ministers and leading actors.

MacLaine has a strong interest in spirituality and metaphysics. Many of her best-selling books, such as Out on a Limb and Dancing in the Light, have it as their central theme. Her interests have led her to such forms of spiritual exploration as walking the Way of St. James, working with Chris Griscom, and practicing Transcendental Meditation.

Her well-known interest in New Age spirituality has made its way into several of her films. In Albert Brooks's romantic comedy Defending Your Life (1991), the recently deceased lead characters, played by Brooks and Meryl Streep, are astonished to find MacLaine introducing their past lives in the "Past Lives Pavilion". In Postcards from the Edge (1990), MacLaine, playing a character loosely based on Debbie Reynolds, sings a special version of "I'm Still Here", with customized lyrics created especially for her by composer Stephen Sondheim. One of the lyrics was changed to "I'm feeling transcendental " am I here?" In the made-for-television movie These Old Broads (2001) " written by Reynolds' daughter Carrie Fisher " starring MacLaine, Debbie Reynolds, Joan Collins, Elizabeth Taylor, and Carrie Fisher, MacLaine's character is a devotee of New Age spirituality.

She has an interest in UFOs, and has given numerous interviews on CNN, NBC and Fox news channels on the subject during 2007"2008. In her book Sage-ing While Age-ing (2007), she mentioned her alien encounters and witnessing of Washington DC UFO incidents in the 1950s. In the April 2011 edition of the Oprah show MacLaine gave an interview that at her New Mexico ranch she has observed numerous UFO incidents for extended period of time and her neighbour has also witnessed that too according to her claim.

MacLaine is godmother to the daughter of U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat and former mayor of Cleveland, Ohio.

Like Warren Beatty, MacLaine used her celebrity status in instrumental roles as a fundraiser and organizer for George McGovern's campaign for president in 1972. That year, she authored the book McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs.

On February 7, 2013, Penguin Group USA published Sachi Parker's autobiography Lucky Me: My Life With " and Without " My Mom, Shirley MacLaine. MacLaine has called the book "virtually all fiction".

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1955	'	Jennifer Rogers	Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year " Actress Nominated " BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress
1955	Artists and Models	Bessie Sparrowbrush
1956	Around the World in 80 Days	Princess Aouda
1958	Some Came Running	Ginnie Moorehead	Nominated " Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Drama
1958	'	Dell Payton
1958	Hot Spell	Virginia Duval
1958	'	Irene Molloy
1958	Ask Any Girl	Meg Wheeler	BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress Silver Bear for Best Actress - Berlin International Film Festival Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1959	Career	Sharon Kensington
1960	Ocean's 11	Tipsy girl	uncredited cameo
1960	Can-Can	Simone Pistache
1960	'	Fran Kubelik	BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Volpi Cup " Venice International Film Festival Nominated " Academy Award for Best Actress
1961	'	Martha Dobie	Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Drama
1961	All in a Night's Work	Katie Robbins
1961	Two Loves	Anna Vorontosov
1962	Two for the Seesaw	Gittel Mosca
1962	My Geisha	Lucy Dell/Yoko Mori
1963	Irma la Douce	Irma la Douce	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Nominated " Academy Award for Best Actress Nominated " BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress
1964	'	Mae Jenkins
1964	What a Way to Go!	Louisa May Foster	Nominated " BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress
1965	John Goldfarb, Please Come Home	Jenny Erichson
1966	Gambit	Nicole Chang	Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1967	Woman Times Seven	Paulette/Maria Teresa/Linda/Edith/ Eve Minou/Marie/Jeanne	Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1968	'	Harriet Blossom
1969	Sweet Charity	Charity Hope Valentine	Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1970	Two Mules for Sister Sara	Sara
1971	Desperate Characters	Sophie Bentwood	Silver Bear for Best Actress - Berlin International Film Festival
1972	'	Norah Benson
1975	'	Herself	Documentary; writer, co-director, producer Nominated " Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary
1977	'	Deedee Rodgers	Nominated " Academy Award for Best Actress
1979	Being There	Eve Rand	Nominated " BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1980	'	Karyn Evans
1980	Loving Couples	Evelyn
1983	Terms of Endearment	Aurora Greenway	Academy Award for Best Actress David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actress Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Drama Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress National Board of Review Award for Best Actress New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Nominated " BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
1984	Cannonball Run II	Veronica
1987	Out on a Limb	Herself	Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Miniseries or Television Film
1988	Madame Sousatzka	Madame Yuvline Sousatzka	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Drama Volpi Cup - Venice International Film Festival
1989	Steel Magnolias	Louisa "Ouiser" Boudreaux	Nominated " American Comedy Award for Funniest Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Nominated " BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role Nominated " Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress
1990	Postcards from the Edge	Doris Mann	Nominated " BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress " Motion Picture
1990	Waiting for the Light	Aunt Zena
1991	Defending Your Life	"Past Lives Pavilion" host
1992	Used People	Pearl Berman	Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1993	Wrestling Ernest Hemingway	Helen Cooney
1994	Guarding Tess	Tess Carlisle	Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1995	'	Margaret Mary Elderdice
1996	'	Aurora Greenway
1996	Mrs. Winterbourne	Grace Winterbourne	Nominated " Satellite Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1997	'	Martha	uncredited
1999	Joan of Arc	Madame de Beaurevoir
2000	Bruno	Helen	Directed by Shirley MacLaine
2001	These Old Broads	Kate Westbourne
2002	Salem Witch Trials	Rebecca Nurse
2002	Hell on Heels: The Battle of Mary Kay	Mary Kay	Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Miniseries or Television Film
2003	Carolina	Grandma Millicent Mirabeau
2005	Rumor Has It?	Katharine Richelieu
2005	Bewitched	Iris Smythson/Endora
2005	In Her Shoes	Ella Hirsch	Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress " Motion Picture Nominated " Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress " Motion Picture
2007	Closing the Ring	Ethel Ann
2008	Coco Chanel	Coco Chanel	Nominated " Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress " Miniseries or a Movie Nominated " Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Miniseries or Television Film Nominated "? Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie
2008	Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning	Amelia Thomas
2010	Valentine's Day	Estelle Paddington
2011	Bernie	Marjorie Nugent
2012-2013	Downton Abbey	Martha Levinson
2013 (upcoming)	The Secret Life of Walter Mitty	Mitty's mother	Scheduled release on December 25, 2013

TV work

• Shirley's World (1971"1972) and a 1977 one hour special
• Where Do We Go From Here? (1978); Winner of the Rose D'Or
• Out on a Limb (1987)
• Downton Abbey (2012)

NCIS (2012)

Bibliography

• (Published in Europe as: )