Shirley MacLaine (born April 24, 1934) is an American film and theater actress, dancer, activist, and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age 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 1983, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Terms of Endearment. She is the elder sister of actor Warren Beatty.
Early life
Named after Shirley Temple, MacLaine was born Shirley MacLean Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Ira Owens Beaty,1 was a professor of psychology, public school administrator and real estate agent, and her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a Canadian born (Nova Scotia) drama teacher; her grandparents were also teachers. The family was devoutly Baptist.23 MacLaine's father moved the family from Richmond to Norfolk, and then to Arlington, Virginia, while she was still a child, then to Waverley, eventually taking a position at Arlington's Thomas Jefferson Junior High School.
Shirley had very weak ankles as a child, so her mother decided to enroll her in ballet class. Strongly motivated by ballet throughout her youth, she never missed a class. Eventually, MacLaine decided that professional ballet wasn't for her. After leaving ballet, MacLaine turned to 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 would later sue Wallis over a contractual dispute, a suit that is credited with having ended the old-style studio system of actor management.4
Career
She made her debut in the Alfred Hitchcock's film The Trouble with Harry (1955), which won her the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actress. In 1956, she took parts in Hot Spell and Around the World in Eighty Days. At the same time, she starred in Some Came Running; this film gave her her first Academy Award nomination - one of five that the film received - and a Golden Globe nomination.
She got her second nomination two years later for The Apartment, starring with Jack Lemmon. The film won 5 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, based on the play by Lillian Hellman. She was again nominated for Irma la Douce (1963), for which she reunited with Wilder and Lemmon.
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 she was able to portray a retired ballerina much like herself, along with co-star Anne Bancroft. In 1983 she won her first Oscar for Terms of Endearment. The film won five 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, like Steel Magnolias with Julia Roberts. 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) Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) with Clint Eastwood, Being There (1979) with Peter Sellers, Postcards From the Edge (1990), 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, Rumor Has It (2005) with Kevin Costner and Jennifer Aniston and In Her Shoes with Cameron Diaz.
MacLaine is also set to star in Poor Things, a drama.
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 also had a short-lived sit-com called Shirley's World.
MacLaine has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1165 Vine Street.
Personal life
MacLaine was married to businessman Steve Parker until they divorced in 1982. They had a daughter, Sachi Parker (born 1956).
MacLaine has a strong and enduring interest in spirituality. 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 El Camino de Santiago, working with Chris Griscom,citation needed and practicing Transcendental Meditation.5
Her well-known interest in New Age spirituality has made its way into several of her films. In Albert Brooks's 1991 romantic comedy Defending Your Life, 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 the 2001 made-for-television movie These Old Broads, starring MacLaine, Debbie Reynolds, Joan Collins, and Elizabeth Taylor, and written by Reynolds's daughter, Carrie Fisher, MacLaine's character is a devotee of New Age spirituality.
MacLaine found her way into many law casebooks when she sued Twentieth Century-Fox for breach of contract. She was to play a role in a film titled Bloomer Girl, but the production was canceled. Twentieth Century-Fox offered her a role in another film, Big Country, Big Man, in hopes of getting out of its contractual obligation to pay her for the canceled film. MacLaine's refusal led to an appeal by Twentieth Century-Fox to the Supreme Court of California in 1970, where the Court ruled against Fox. Parker v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp., 474 P.2d 689 (Cal. 1970).
She also is godmother to the daughter of U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat and former mayor of Cleveland, Ohio.6
Filmography
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)
References
Bibliography
- MacLaine, Shirley (1970). "Don't Fall Off the Mountain". New York: W.W. Norton & Company Limited. ISBN 9780393073386.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1972). McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Limited. ISBN 9780393053418.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1975). You Can Get There from Here. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Limited. ISBN 9780393074895.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1983). Out on a Limb. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. ISBN 9780553050356.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1986). Dancing in the Light. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 9780553761962.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1987). It's All in the Playing. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 9780553052176.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1989). Going Within: A Guide to Inner Transformation. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 9780553678.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1991). Dance While You Can. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 9780553076073.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1995). My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 9780553097177.
- MacLaine, Shirley (2000). The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit. New York: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. ISBN 9780743400725. (Published in Europe as: MacLaine, Shirley (2001). The Camino: A Pilgrimage of Courage. London: Pocket Books. ISBN 0743409213. )
- MacLaine, Shirley (2003). Out on a Leash: Exploring the Nature of Reality and Love. New York: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. ISBN 9780743485067.
- MacLaine, Shirley (2007). Sage-ing While Age-ing. New York: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. ISBN 9781416550419.
External links
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Awards for Shirley MacLaine |
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![video Academy Award winning actress Shirley MacLaine talks with WNYCs Leonard Lopate about why "Star Beings" are so interested in Earth ... Picture](../viewVideo.html?title=Shirley MacLaine: Extraterrestrials and JFK&videoType=YouTube&summary=Academy Award winning actress Shirley MacLaine talks with WNYCs Leonard Lopate about why "Star Beings" are so interested in Earth ...&link=http://www.youtube.com/v/0tVWsYK3U4c&fs=1&source=uds&autoplay=1&thumb=http://3.gvt0.com/vi/0tVWsYK3U4c/default.jpg&celebrity=Shirley MacLaine)
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