Shirley MacLanie

Shirley MacLaine (born Shirley MacLean Beaty; April 24, 1934) is an American film, television, and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist, and author. An Academy Award winner, MacLaine received the 40th AFI Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 2012, and received the Kennedy Center Honors for her lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts in 2013. She is known for her New Age beliefs, and has an interest in spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a series of autobiographical works that describe these beliefs, document her world travels, and describe her Hollywood career.
Her first film was Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry in 1955. A six-time Academy Award nominee, MacLaine received a nomination for Best Documentary Feature for The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir (1975), and Best Actress nominations for Some Came Running (1958), The Apartment (1960), Irma la Douce (1963), and The Turning Point (1977), before winning Best Actress for Terms of Endearment (1983). She twice won the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress, for Ask Any Girl (1959), and The Apartment (1960); and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy-Variety or Music Special for the 1976 TV special, Gypsy In My Soul. She has also won five competitive Golden Globe Awards, and received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 1998 ceremony.
==Early life==
Named after actress Shirley Temple (who was six years old at the time), Shirley MacLean Beaty was born on April 24, 1934, in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Ira Owens Beaty,Gary Boyd Roberts (Revised April 18, 2008) #83 Royal Descents, Notable Kin, and Printed Sources: A Third Set of Ten Hollywood Figures (or Groups Thereof), with a Coda on Two Directors. New England Historic Genealogical Society 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 younger brother is the actor, writer, and director Warren Beatty; he changed the spelling of his surname when he became an actor. Their parents raised them as Baptists. Her uncle (her mother's brother-in-law) was A. A. MacLeod, a Communist member of the Ontario legislature in the 1940s. While MacLaine was still a child, Ira Beaty moved his family from Richmond to Norfolk, and then to Arlington and Waverly, then back to Arlington eventually taking a position at Arlington's Thomas Jefferson Junior High School in 1945. MacLaine played baseball on an all-boys team, holding the record for most home runs, which earned her the nickname "Powerhouse". During the 1950s, the family resided in the Dominion Hills section of Arlington.
As a toddler, she had weak ankles and would fall over with the slightest misstep, so her mother decided to enroll her in ballet class at the Washington School of Ballet 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 and Juliet and The Sleeping Beauty, she always played the boys' roles due to being the tallest in the group and the absence of males in the class. Eventually, she had a substantial female role as the fairy godmother in Cinderella; while warming up backstage, she broke her ankle, but then tightened the ribbons on her toe shoes and proceeded to dance the role all the way through before calling for an ambulance. Ultimately she decided against making a career of professional ballet because she had grown too tall and was unable to acquire perfect technique. She explained that she didn't have the ideal body type, lacking the requisite "beautifully constructed feet" of high arches, high insteps and a flexible ankle. Also slowly realizing ballet's propensity to be too all-consuming, and ultimately limiting, she moved on to other forms of dancing, acting and musical theater.
She attended Washington-Lee High School, where she was on the cheerleading squad and acted in school theatrical productions.
==Career==
===1955–1979===
The summer before her senior year of high school, MacLaine went to New York City to try acting on Broadway, having minor success in the chorus of Oklahoma! After she graduated, she returned and was in the dancing ensemble of the Broadway production of Me and Juliet (1953–1954). Afterwards she became an understudy to actress Carol Haney in The Pajama Game; in May 1954 Haney injured her ankle during a Wednesday matinee, and MacLaine replaced her.Finstad, Suzanne, Warren Beatty: A Private Man (2005, NY, Random House) page 106. The exact nature of Haney's injury - a sprain, a torn ligament, a break, a fracture - varies from source to source. A few months later, with Haney still injured, film producer Hal B. Wallis saw MacLaine's performance, and signed her to work for Paramount Pictures.
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. This was quickly followed by her role in the Martin and Lewis film Artists and Models (also 1955). Soon afterwards, she had a role in Around the World in 80 Days (1956). This was followed by Hot Spell and a leading role in Some Came Running (both 1958); for the latter film, she gained her first Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe nomination. Her second Oscar nomination came two years later for The Apartment (1960), 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. 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."Patrick McGilligan, Clint: The Life and Legend (1999), p. 182 At the peak of her success, she replaced Marilyn Monroe in Irma la Douce and What a Way to Go! (1964). Other films from this period include Gambit (1966), with Michael Caine, and the film version of the musical Sweet Charity (1968), based on the script for Fellini's Nights of Cabiria released a decade earlier.
MacLaine's documentary film The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir (1975), co-directed with Claudia Weill, concentrates on the experiences of women in China. It was nominated for the year's Documentary Feature Oscar. In 1976 MacLaine appeared in a series of concerts at the London Palladium and New York's Palace Theatre. The latter of these was released as the acclaimed live album Shirley MacLaine Live at the Palace. Co-starring with Anne Bancroft in The Turning Point (1977), MacLaine portrayed a retired ballerina much like herself; she was nominated for an Oscar as the Best Actress in a Leading Role. In 1978, she was awarded the Women in Film 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. She appeared with Peter Sellers in the satire Being There (1979), and was cast as a photojournalist in a short-lived television sitcom, Shirley's World (1971–1972), co-produced by Sheldon Leonard and ITC and shot in the United Kingdom.
===1980–present===
MacLaine starred in A Change of Seasons (1980) alongside Anthony Hopkins, and won the Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar for Terms of Endearment (1983), playing Debra Winger's mother. She won a Golden Globe for Best Actress (Drama) for Madame Sousatzka (1988).
She has continued to star in major films, such as Steel Magnolias with Sally Field, Julia Roberts, and other stars. In 2000, she made her feature-film directorial debut, and starred in Bruno, which was released to video as The Dress Code. MacLaine has starred in Postcards from the Edge (1990), with Meryl Streep, playing a fictionalized version of Debbie Reynolds from a screenplay by Reynolds's daughter, Carrie Fisher; Used People (1992), with Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates; Guarding Tess (1994), with Nicolas Cage; Mrs. Winterbourne (1996), with Ricki Lake and Brendan Fraser; Rumor Has It… (2005) with Kevin Costner and Jennifer Aniston; In Her Shoes (also 2005), with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette; and Closing the Ring (2007), directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Christopher Plummer.
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 appeared in the third and fourth seasons of the British drama Downton Abbey as Martha Levinson, mother to Cora, Countess of Grantham (played by Elizabeth McGovern) and Harold Levinson (played by Paul Giamatti) in 2012–2013.
In 2016, MacLaine starred in Wild Oats with Jessica Lange. On February 2016, it was announced that MacLaine will star in the live-action family film A Little Mermaid, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, to be produced by MVP Studios.
==Lawsuits==
MacLaine sued Hal Wallis over a contractual dispute, a suit that has been credited with ending the old-style studio star system of actor management.Hanrihan v. Parker, 19 Misc. 2d 467, 469 (N.Y. Misc. 1959).
In 1966, MacLaine sued Twentieth Century-Fox for breach of contract when the studio reneged on its agreement to star MacLaine in a film version of the musical Bloomer Girl, to be filmed in Hollywood, offering her instead the female dramatic lead in a Western to be filmed in Australia. The case was decided in Maclaine's favor, and affirmed on appeal by the California Supreme Court in 1970; the case is often cited in law-school textbooks as a major example of employment-contract law.
==Personal life==
thumb|left|MacLaine in Deauville, France, in September 1987
MacLaine was married to businessman Steve Parker from 1954 until their divorce in 1982; they have a daughter, Sachi. In April 2011, while promoting her new book, I'm Over All That, she revealed to Oprah Winfrey that she had had an open relationship with her husband. MacLaine also told Winfrey that she often fell for the leading men she worked with, with the exceptions of Jack Lemmon (The Apartment, Irma la Douce) and Jack Nicholson (Terms of Endearment). MacLaine also had a long-running affair with Australian politician and two-time Liberal leader Andrew Peacock.
MacLaine has also gotten into feuds with such notable co-stars as Anthony Hopkins (A Change of Seasons), who said that "she was the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with", and Debra Winger (Terms of Endearment).
MacLaine has claimed that, in a previous life in Atlantis, she was the brother to a 35,000-year-old spirit named Ramtha channeled by American mystic teacher and author J. Z. Knight.
She has a strong interest in spirituality and metaphysics, the central theme of some of her best-selling books, including Out on a Limb and Dancing in the Light. She has undertaken 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 also 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 sings a version of "I'm Still Here", with customized lyrics created for her by composer Stephen Sondheim. One of the lyrics was changed to "I'm feeling transcendental – am I here?" In the 2001 television movie These Old Broads, MacLaine's character is a devotee of New Age spirituality.
She has an interest in UFOs, and gave numerous interviews on CNN, NBC and Fox news channels on the subject during 2007–08. In her book Sage-ing While Age-ing (2007), she described alien encounters and witnessing a Washington, D.C. UFO incident in the 1950s. On an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show in April 2011, MacLaine stated that she and her neighbor observed numerous UFO incidents at her New Mexico ranch for extended periods of time.
MacLaine is godmother to the daughter of former Democratic U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich.
Along with her brother, Warren Beatty, MacLaine used her celebrity status in instrumental roles as a fundraiser and organizer for George McGovern's campaign for president in 1972.MacLaine, Shirley, McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972.McGovern, George S., Grassroots: The Autobiography of George McGovern, New York: Random House, 1977, pp. 126, 172.White, Theodore H., The Making of the President 1972, Atheneum Publishers, 1973, pp. 236, 258, 425. 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.Lucky Me. Penguin Group MacLaine has called the book "virtually all fiction".Gostin, Nicki (February 12, 2013). "Shirley MacLaine's Daughter Says 'My Mom Thought My Dad Was Clone Astronaut'". Fox News.
In 2015, she sparked criticism for her comments on Jews, Christians, and Stephen Hawking. In particular she claimed that victims of the Holocaust were experiencing the results of their own karma, and suggested that Hawking subconsciously caused himself to develop ALS as a means to focus better on physics.
==Awards and honors==
MacLaine was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts in December 2013. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1617 Vine Street and in 1999 was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival, and her likeness has been sculpted in wax for Madame Tussauds Las Vegas.
In 2011, the government of France made her a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur.
In the 2017 Oscars Award Show, she presented the best Foreign Language Film of the year alongside Charlize Theron, and was featured in a segment about her work in The Apartment.
In 2019 she won the Movies For Grown Ups with AARP the Magazine's Life Time Achievement Award.
==Filmography==
Year	Title 	Role 	Notes
1955	 	Jennifer Rogers 	Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – ActressNominated—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 ActressNominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama
1958	 	Dell Payton 	
1958	Hot Spell 	Virginia Duval 	
1958	 	Irene Molloy 	
1959	Ask Any Girl 	Meg Wheeler 	BAFTA Award for Best Foreign ActressSilver Bear for Best Actress – Berlin International Film FestivalNominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical
1959	Career 	Sharon Kensington 	
1960	Ocean's 11 	Tipsy woman 	Uncredited cameo
1960	Can-Can 	Simone Pistache 	
1960	 	Fran Kubelik 	BAFTA Award for Best Foreign ActressGolden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or ComedyVolpi Cup – Venice International Film FestivalNominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
1961	The Children's Hour 	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 ComedyNominated—Academy Award for Best ActressNominated—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, producerNominated—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 RoleNominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical
1980	 	Karyn Evans 	
1980	Loving Couples 	Evelyn 	
1983	Terms of Endearment 	Aurora Greenway 	Academy Award for Best ActressDavid di Donatello for Best Foreign ActressGolden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture DramaLos Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best ActressNational Board of Review Award for Best ActressNew York Film Critics Circle Award for Best ActressNominated—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 PictureNominated—BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting RoleNominated—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 RoleNominated—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	The West Side Waltz 	Margaret Mary Elderdice 	
1996	 	Aurora Greenway 	
1996	Mrs. Winterbourne 	Grace Winterbourne 	Nominated—Satellite Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1997	A Smile Like Yours 	Martha 	Uncredited
2000	The Dress Code 	Helen 	Also director
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 PictureNominated—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 MovieShirley Maclaine Emmy Nominated. Emmys.com (April 5, 2011). Retrieved on 2016-02-10.Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television FilmNominated—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 	
2013	The Secret Life of Walter Mitty 	Edna Mitty 	
2014	Elsa & Fred 	Elsa Hayes 	
2016	Wild Oats 	Eva 	
2017	The Last Word 	Harriett Lauler 	
2018	The Little Mermaid 	Eloise 	
2019	Noelle 	Polly 	
==Television work==
* Shower of Stars (1955) (2 episodes)
* 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)
* Stories From My Childhood (1998)
* Joan of Arc (1999)
* Downton Abbey (2012–2013); Martha Levinson (season 3 recurring, season 4 guest)
* Glee (2014); June Dolloway (2 episodes)
* A Heavenly Christmas (2016)
==Bibliography==
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==References==
==Further reading==
* Erens, Patricia (1978). The Films of Shirley MacLaine. South Brunswick: A. S. Barnes. .
==External links==
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* Shirley MacLaine interviewed by Ginny Dougary (2005)
* Shirley Maclaine at Emmys.com
* Shirley MacLaine interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, November 11, 1983
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