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Shirley MacLaine
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Shirley MacLaine (born April 24, 1934) is an American Academy Award-winning 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.
d after Shirley Temple, MacLaine was born Shirley MacLean Beaty 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 Nova Scotia-born drama teacher; her grandparents were also teachers.
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Encyclopedia
Shirley MacLaine (born April 24, 1934) is an American Academy Award-winning 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.
Biography
Early life
Named after Shirley Temple, MacLaine was born Shirley MacLean Beaty 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 Nova Scotia-born drama teacher; her grandparents were also teachers. Through her mother she is descended from the Scottish Clan Maclean. The family was devoutly Baptist. MacLaine's father moved the family from Richmond to Norfolk, Virginia and then to Arlington, Virginia while she was still a child, then to Waverly, Virginia between 1932-1936, eventually taking a position at Arlington's Jefferson Middle School. The Beaty family lived in a house in the Western part of the county off Wilson Boulevard where it was said that Shirley and brother, Warren, were known around their neighborhood as troublemakers in their pre-adolescent days.
Her early childhood dream was to be a ballerina. She took ballet fervently all throughout her youth and never missed one class, and whenever they performed a piece, she would play the boy's role, due to being the tallest one there. She was so determined and so set on being a dancer that her recurring childhood nightmare was that she missed the bus to class. She finally got to play a respectable woman's role, the Fairy Godmother in "Cinderella," and while warming up backstage, she snapped her ankle. Many would bow out in this particular situation, but she was so determined that she simply tied the ankle ribbon on her toe shoes extra tight and went "on with the show." After it was over, she called for an ambulance.
Eventually, MacLaine decided that professional ballet was not for her. She said that she did not really have the right body type and that she did not want to starve herself. Also, that her feet were not "beautifully constructed" (without high arches and insteps). Nor was she of "exquisite beauty." At that point, she decided to switch her focus 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 went to New York to try acting on Broadway with some success. After she graduated, she went back and within a year she achieved her goal of becoming a star when 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, director-producer Hal B. Wallis was in the audience, took note of MacLaine, and signed her to go to Hollywood 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.
Career
She made her debut in the Alfred Hitchcock film The Trouble with Harry in 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 the film's five Oscar nods - and a Golden Globe nomination. She also starred in a lesser known film called "The Children's Hour" also starring Audrey Hepburn, based on the play by Lillian Hellman. 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 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, 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 the awards season for films of 1988, she became the first actress since the inception of the Golden Globe Awards to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress (Drama)—for Madame Sousatzka—without getting an Oscar nomination for the same performance (Kate Winslet became the second for her performance in Revolutionary Road (2008)). MacLaine won her award for Madame Sousatzka in a three-way tie with Jodie Foster (The Accused) and Sigourney Weaver (Gorillas in the Mist).
She went on to star in other major films, like Steel Magnolias with Julia Roberts. She made her feature-film directorial debut in the quirky film Bruno, written by then new-comer David Ciminello in his Disney-Meets-David Lynch style. MacLaine starred as Helen in this film, which was released to video under the title 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 "Being There" with Peter Sellers, "Used People" with Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates, "Guarding Tess" with Nicholas Cage, "Sweet Charity", "Rumor Has It" with Kevin Costner and Jennifer Aniston, and "In Her Shoes" with Toni Collette.
MacLaine is also set to star in Poor Things, a drama. The production has been delayed due to Lindsay Lohan's stint in rehab.
MacLaine has also appeared in numerous television projects including "Out on a Limb", an autobiographical miniseries based upon the book of the same name, "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 1615 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's interest in spirituality is very strong and long-lived. Many of her best-selling books, such as Out on a Limb and Dancing in the Light have it as their central theme. Her beliefs have compelled her to explore herself and the world. This includes walking El Camino de Santiago and working with Chris Griscom.
MacLaine found her way into many law school 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 cancelled.
Twentieth Century-Fox offered her a role in another film, Big Country, Big Man, in hope of getting out of its contractual obligation to pay her for the cancelled 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 shares a birthday with Barbra Streisand which they celebrate together every year.
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)
Bibliography
- "Don't Fall Off the Mountain" (1970)
- McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs (1972)
- You Can Get There from Here (1975)
- Out on a Limb (1984)
- Dancing in the Light (1986)
- It's All in the Playing (1988)
- Going Within: A Guide for Inner Transformation (1989)
- Dance While You Can (1991)
- My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir (1995)
- The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit (2000)
- Out on a Leash: Exploring the Nature of Reality and Love (2003)
- Sage-ing While Age-ing (2007)
External links
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