0 Oscar Actors: Best Actress (80 Winners)–Career Start (Most Updated)

Oscar Actors: Best Actress (80 Winners)

1929-Present (includes Mikey Madison)

Aug 19, 2025

My Oscar Book:

Career Start 

Aug 7, 2025–26,224 (please do Dunaway)

1920s

1928: Janet Gaynor (for 3 films), Seventh Heaven, Street Angel, Sunrise
1929: Mary Pickford, Coquette

1930s

1930: Norma Shearer, The Divorcee
1931: Marie Dressler, Min and Bill
1932: Helen Hayes, The Sin of Madelon Claudet
1933: Katharine Hepburn, Morning Glory
1934: Claudette Colbert, It Happened One Night
1935: Bette Davis, Dangerous
1936: Luise Rainer, Great Ziegfeld
1937: Luise Rainer, The Good Earth
1938: Bette Davis, Jezebel
1939: Vivien Leigh, Gone with the Wind

1940s

1940: Ginger Rogers, Kitty Foyle
1941: Joan Fontaine, Suspicion
1942: Greer Garson, Mrs. Miniver
1943: Jennifer Jones, Song of Bernadette
1944: Ingrid Bergman, Gaslight
1945: Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce
1946: Olivia De Havilland, To Each His Own
1947: Loretta Young, The Farmer’s Daughter
1948: Jane Wyman, Johnny Belinda
1949: Olivia De Havilland, The Heiress

1950s

1950: Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday
1951: Vivien Leigh, A Streetcar Named Desire
1952: Shirley Booth, Come Back Little Sheba
1953: Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday
1954: Grace Kelly, Country Girl
1955: Anna Magnani, The Rose Tattoo
1956: Ingrid Bergman, Anastasia
1957: Joanne Woodward, The Three Faces of Eve
1958: Susan Hayward, I want to Live
1959: Simone Signoret, Room at the Top

1960s

1960: Elizabeth Taylor, Butterfield 8
1961: Sophia Loren, Two Women
1962: Anne Bancroft, The Miracle Worker
1963: Patricia Neal, Hud
1964: Julie Andrews, Mary Poppins
1965: Julie Christie, Darling
1966: Elizabeth Taylor, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
1967: Katharine Hepburn, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
1968: Tie–Katharine Hepburn, Lion in Winter; Barbra Streisand, Funny Girl
1969: Maggie Smith, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

1970s

1970: Glenda Jackson, Women in Love
1971: Jane Fonda, Klute
1972: Liza Minnelli, Cabaret
1973: Glenda Jackson, A Touch of Class
1974: Ellen Burstyn, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
1975: Louise Fletcher, One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest
1976: Faye Dunaway, Network
1977: Diane Keaton, Annie Hall
1978: Jane Fonda, Coming Home
1979: Sally Field, Norma Rae

1980s

1980: Sissy Spacek, A Coal Miner’s Daughter
1981: Katharine Hepburn, On Golden Pond
1982: Meryl Streep, Sophie’s Choice
1983: Shirley MacLaine, Terms of Endearment
1984: Sally Field, Places in Heart
1985: Geraldine Page, The Trip to Bountiful
1986: Marlee Matlin, Children of a Lesser God
1987: Cher, Moonstruck
1988: Jodie Foster, The Accused
1989: Jessica Tandy, Driving Miss Daisy

1990s

1990: Kathy Bates, Misery
1991: Jodie Foster, The Silence of the Lambs
1992: Emma Thompson: Howards End
1993: Holly Hunter, he Piano

1994: Jessica Lange, Blue Sky
1995: Susan Sarandon, Dead Man Walking
1996: Frances McDormand, Fargo
1997: Helen Hunt, As Good As It Gets
1998: Gwyneth Paltrow, Shakespeare in Love
1999: Hilary Swank, Boys Don’t Cry

2000s

2000: Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich

2001: Halle Berry, Monster’s Ball

2002: Nicole Kidman, The Hours

2003: Charlize Theron, Monster

2004: Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby

2005: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

2006: Helen Mirren, The Queen

2007: Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose

2008: Kate Winslet, The Reader

2009: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side

2010-2019

2010: Natalie Portman, Black Swan

2011: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

2012: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

2013: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmin

2014: Brie Larson, Room

2015: Julianne Moore, Still Alice

2016: Emma Stone, La La Land

2017: Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

2018: Olivia Colman, The Favourite

2019: Renee Zellweger, Judy

2020-Present

2020: Frances McDormand, Nomadland

2021: Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye

2022: Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All At Once

2023: Emma Stone, Poor Things

2024: Mikey Madison, Anora

My Oscar Book

BIOS (Chronologically)

Gaynor, Janet, 3 films, 1928

Gaynor won her first professional acting job on December 26, 1924, as extra in a Hal Roach comedy short.

This led to extra work in features and shorts for Film Booking Offices of America and Universal. Universal hired her as stock player for $50 a week.

Six weeks later, an exec at Fox Film Corporation offered her screen test for a supporting role in the film The Johnstown Flood (1926).

Her performance caught the attention of Fox executives, who signed her to a five-year contract and began casting her in leading roles.

Later that year, Gaynor was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars (along with Joan Crawford, Dolores del Río, Mary Astor, and others).

By 1927, Gaynor was one of Hollywood’s leading ladies, cultivating the image of a sweet, wholesome, and pure woman.

Her performances in 7th Heaven, the first of 12 films she would make with actor Charles Farrell; Sunrise, directed by F. W. Murnau; and Street Angel, also with Charles Farrell, earned her the first Best Actress Oscar in 1929.

It was the first and only time that the award was granted for multiple roles, for  total recent work rather than for one particular performance.

This practice was prohibited three years later by a new AMPAS rule.

Gaynor was not only the first actress to win the award, but at 22, she was also the youngest until 1986.

Pickford, Mary, Coquette, 1929

On April 19, 1909, the Biograph Company director D. W. Griffith screen-tested her at the company’s New York studio for a role in the nickelodeon film Pippa Passes. The role went to someone else but Griffith was taken with Pickford, who grasped that movie acting was simpler than the stylized stage acting.

She made 51 films in 1909, almost one a week–her first starring role was in The Violin Maker of Cremona opposite future husband Owen Moore.

Dressler, Marie, Minn and Bill, 1930

Dressler’s first role in a feature was in 1914 at the age of 44.

In 1902, she had met fellow Canadian Mack Sennett and helped him get a job in the theater. After Sennett became the owner of his namesake studio, he convinced Dressler to star in his 1914 silent Tillie’s Punctured Romance.

In 1925, Dressler filmed two-reel short movies in Europe for producer Harry Reichenbach, but they were a failure, and Dressler announced retirement from showbusiness. Allan Dwan offered her a small part in The Joy Girl.

Frances Marion, a screenwriter for MGM, used her influence with production chief Irving Thalberg to return Dressler to the screen.

Her first MGM feature was The Callahans and the Murphys (1927), a rowdy silent comedy co-starring Dressler and Polly Moran, written by Marion.

While the film brought Dressler to Hollywood, it did not reestablish her career.

Her next appearance was a minor part in the First National film Breakfast at Sunrise. She appeared again with Moran in Bringing Up Father, also written by Marion.

Dressler returned to MGM in 1928’s The Patsy as the mother of the characters played by Marion Davies and Jane Winton.

The “talkies” presented no problems for Dressler, whose voice could handle both sympathetic scenes and snappy comebacks.

Marion persuaded Thalberg to give Dressler the role of Marthy in the 1930 Anna Christie, Garbo’s first talkie. MGM then signed her to a $500-per-week contract. Dressler acted in comedic films which were popular with movie-goers.

She became Hollywood’s number-one box-office attraction, and stayed on top until her death in 1934.

For Min and Bill, with Wallace Beery, she won the 1930 Best Actress Oscar.

Norma Shearer, Divorcee, 1931

A year after her arrival in New York, Shearer got her break in film, fourth billing in a B-movie titled The Stealers (1921).

In January 1923, Shearer received an offer from Louis B. Mayer Pictures. Irving Thalberg had moved to Louis B. Mayer Pictures as vice president on February 15, 1923, but had already sent a telegram to Shearer’s agent, inviting her to the studio.

After 3 years of hardship, she signed a contract, calling for $250 a week for 6 months, with options for renewal and test for a leading role in The Wanters.

Shearer left New York around February 17, accompanied by her mother. She was less impressed, however, with her first screen test; Mayer and Thalberg, cameraman Ernest Palmer found Shearer frantic and trembling in the hallway. The lead in The Wanters seemed hers, until the director objected, finding her “unphotogenic.”

Again, Shearer was relegated to a minor role, in Pleasure Mad–the director complained to Mayer that he could get nothing out of the young actress.

Thalberg cast her in six films in eight months, and the apprenticeship served Shearer well.

On April 26, 1924, Louis B. Mayer Pictures was merged with Metro Pictures and the Samuel Goldwyn Company to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Shearer was cast with Lon Chaney and John Gilbert in the studio’s first official production, He Who Gets Slapped. The film was a success and helped the meteoric rise of the new company, and Shearer’s visibility.

By late 1925, she was carrying her own films, and was one of MGM’s biggest attractions, a bona fide star. She signed a new contract, which paid $1,000 a week and would rise to $5,000 over the next five years.

Having become a star, Shearer’s challenge was to remain one, based on  competition from other major actresses. Shearer was attracted to her boss, Thalberg, his commanding presence and steely grace.

In spite of his youth–he was only 26–Thalberg became a father figure to the 23-year-old actress.

By 1927, Shearer had made a total of 13 silent films for MGM. Each had been produced for under $200,000, and had been a box-office hit, often making a $200,000+ profit for the studio. She was rewarded for this consistent success by being cast in Lubitsch’s The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, her first prestige production, with a budget over $1,000,000.

On September 29, 1927, Shearer and Thalberg were married; she converted to Judaism in order to marry Thalberg.

Hayes, Helen, Sin Claudet (Child Actor), 1932

Child Actor

Hayes began a stage career at an early age. Her stage debut was as 5-year-old singer at Washington’s Belasco Theatre, on Lafayette Square, across from the White House.

By the age of 10, she had made a short film, “Jean and the Calico Doll”
(1910), but moved to Hollywood when her husband, playwright Charles MacArthur, signed a Hollywood deal.

Hayes attended Dominican Academy’s prestigious primary school, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, from 1910 to 1912, appearing there in The Old Dutch, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and other shows.

She attended the Academy of the Sacred Heart Convent in Washington and graduated in 1917.

Her sound film debut was The Sin of Madelon Claudet, for which she won the Best Actress.

She followed that with starring roles in Arrowsmith (with Ronald Colman), A Farewell to Arms (with Gary Cooper), The White Sister (opposite Clark Gable), Another Language (opposite Robert Montgomery), What Every Woman Knows (a reprise of her Broadway hit), and Vanessa: Her Love Story also with Robert Montgomery.

But Hayes did not prefer film to the stage.

Hepburn, Katharine, Little Women, 1933, (also ) 1967, 1968, 1981

A scout for the Hollywood agent Leland Hayward spotted Katharine Hepburn’s appearance in “The Warrior’s Husband,” and asked her to test for the part of Sydney Fairfield in the upcoming RKO film A Bill of Divorcement.

Spotted

Director George Cukor was impressed by what he saw: “There was this odd creature”, he recalled, “she was unlike anybody I’d ever heard.” He particularly liked the manner in which she picked up a glass: “I thought she was very talented in that action.” Offered the role, Hepburn demanded $1,500 a week, a large amount for an unknown actress. Cukor encouraged the studio to accept her demands and they signed Hepburn to a temporary contract with a three-week guarantee. RKO head David O. Selznick recounted that he took a “tremendous chance” in casting the unusual actress.

Hepburn arrived in California in July 1932, at age 25. She starred in A Bill of Divorcement opposite John Barrymore, but showed no sign of intimidation. Hepburn was fascinated by the industry from the start. The picture was a success and Hepburn received positive reviews. On the strength of A Bill of Divorcement, RKO signed her to a long-term contract. Cukor became a lifetime friend and colleague—he and Hepburn made 10 films together.

Hepburn’s second film was Christopher Strong (1933), the story of an aviator and her affair with a married man. The picture was not commercially successful, but Hepburn’s reviews were good.

Hepburn’s third picture confirmed her as a major actress, playing aspiring actress Eva Lovelace—a role intended for Constance Bennett—in Morning Glory, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar. She had seen the script on the desk of producer Pandro S. Berman and, convinced that she was born to play the part, insisted that the role be hers.

Hepburn chose not to attend the awards ceremony—as she would not for the duration of her career—but she was thrilled with the win.

Her success continued with the role of Jo in the film Little Women (1933). The picture was a hit, one of the film industry’s biggest successes to date, and Hepburn won the Best Actress at the Venice Film Fest.

Colbert, Claudette, It Happened One, 1934

She received critical acclaim as a carnival snake charmer in the Broadway production of The Barker (1927), and reprised the role in London’s West End.

Spotted

She was noticed by theatrical producer Leland Hayward, who suggested her for the heroine in the silent film For the Love of Mike (1927); now believed to be lost, the film didn’t fare well at the box office.

In 1928, Colbert signed a contract with Paramount Pictures. There was a demand for stage actors who could handle dialogue in the new “talkies,” and Colbert’s elegance and musical voice were assets.

Her beauty drew attention in The Hole in the Wall (1929), but at first she did not like film acting. Her earliest films were in New York.

During the shoot of The Lady Lies (also 1929), she also appeared nightly in the play See Naples and Die. The Lady Lies was a box-office success.

In 1930, she starred opposite Maurice Chevalier in The Big Pond, filmed in both English and French. She co-starred with Fredric March in Manslaughter (1930), receiving critical acclaim as a woman charged with vehicular manslaughter. She was paired with March again in Honor Among Lovers (1931).

She also starred in Mysterious Mr. Parkes (1931), a French-language version of Slightly Scarlet for the European market, although it was also screened in the US. She sang and played piano in the Lubitsch musical The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), which was nominated for the Best Picture. Colbert’s ability to “hold her man” (Chevalier again) surpassed “Queen” Miriam Hopkins. Colbert also made the modestly successful His Woman (1931) with Gary Cooper.

Colbert’s career got further boost when Cecil B. DeMille cast her as femme fatale Poppaea in the historical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932), opposite Fredric March and Charles Laughton. In one of the best remembered scenes of her career, she bathes nude in a marble pool filled with asses’ milk. The film was one of her biggest box-office hits.

In 1933, Colbert renegotiated her contract with Paramount to allow her to appear in films for other studios. Her musical voice, a contralto, was also featured in Torch Singer (1933), co-starring Ricardo Cortez and David Manners.

In 1933, she was ranked as the year’s 13th box-office star.

By 1935, she had appeared in 28 films, averaging 4 per year.

Many early films were commercial successes, and her performances were admired. Her leading roles were down-to-earth and diverse, highlighting her versatility.

Colbert was initially reluctant to appear in the screwball comedy It Happened One Night (1934). The studio agreed to pay her $50,000 for the role, and guaranteed filming would be done within 4 weeks so she could take a planned vacation. She won the Best Actress for the film.

Cleopatra (1934), in which Colbert played the title role opposite Warren William and Henry Wilcoxon, was the highest-grossing picture of that year.

Thereafter, Colbert did not wish to be portrayed as overtly sexual, and refused such roles. Imitation of Life, on loan to Universal, was another box office success. Those three films were nominated for the Best Picture.

Colbert is the only actress to date to star in three films nominated for Best Picture in the same year. (Quiz)

Davis, Bette Dangerous, 1935, 1938

In 1930, 22-year-old Davis moved to Hollywood to screen test for Universal Studios. Davis and her mother travelled by train to Hollywood. She failed her first screen test, but was used in several screen tests for other actors. A second test was arranged for Davis, for the 1931 film A House Divided. Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Studios, considered terminating Davis’ employment, but cinematographer Karl Freund told him she had “lovely eyes” and would be suitable for Bad Sister (1931), in which she subsequently made her film debut.

Her nervousness was compounded when she overheard the chief of production, Carl Laemmle Jr., comment to another executive that she had “about as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville”, one of the film’s co-stars. The film was not a success, and her next role in Seed (1931) was too brief to attract attention.

Universal renewed her contract for three months, and she appeared in a small role in Waterloo Bridge (1931), before being lent to Columbia Pictures for The Menace, and to Capital Films for Hell’s House (all 1932).

After one year, and 6 unsuccessful films, Laemmle elected not to renew her contract.

Davis was preparing to return to New York when actor George Arliss chose Davis for the lead role in the Warner Bros. picture The Man Who Played God (1932).

For the rest of her life, Davis credited him with helping her achieve her “break” in Hollywood.

After more than 20 films, the role of the vicious and slatternly Mildred Rogers in the RKO Radio production of Of Human Bondage (1934), a film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel, earned Davis her first major critical acclaim. The film was a success, and Davis’ characterization earned praise from critics.

She was disappointed when Jack L. Warner refused to lend her to Columbia Studios to appear in It Happened One Night, and instead cast her in the melodrama Housewife.

When Davis was not nominated for an Oscar in Of Human Bondage, The Hollywood Citizen News questioned the omission, and Norma Shearer, herself a nominee, joined a campaign to have Davis nominated. This prompted an announcement from the Academy president, Howard Estabrook, who said that under the circumstances, “any voter … may write on the ballot his or her personal choice for the winners”, thus allowing, for the only time in history, of a candidate not officially nominated for an award. The uproar led, however, to a change in academy voting procedures the following year, wherein nominations were determined by votes from all eligible members of a particular branch rather than by a smaller committee, with results independently tabulated by the accounting firm Price Waterhouse.

Davis appeared in Dangerous (1935) as a troubled actress, and received very good reviews and her first Oscar.

 

Rainer, Luise, Great Ziegfeld, Good Earth (1936, 1937)

Rainer moved to Hollywood in 1935 as hopeful new star. MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer and story editor Samuel Marx had seen footage of Rainer before she came to Hollywood, and both felt she had the looks, charm, and a “certain tender vulnerability” that Mayer admired in female stars.

Because of poor command of English, Mayer assigned actress Constance Collier to train her in correct speech and dramatic modulation, and Rainer’s English improved rapidly.

Her first film role in Hollywood was in Escapade (1935), a remake of her Austrian film, co-starring William Powell. She received the part after Myrna Loy gave up her role halfway through filming. After seeing the preview, Rainer was displeased with how she appeared: “On the screen, I looked so big and full of face, it was awful.” The film generated immense publicity for Rainer, hailed as “Hollywood’s next sensation.”

Stars are not important, only what they do as a part of their work is important. Artists need quiet in which to grow. It seems Hollywood does not like to give them this quiet. Stardom is bad because Hollywood makes too much of it, there is too much ‘bowing down’ before stars. Stardom is weight pressing down over the head — and one must grow upward or not at all.

Rainer’s next performance was as the real-life character Anna Held in the musical biography The Great Ziegfeld, again co-starring William Powell.

Davis, Bette, Jezebel, 1938 (see 1935)

Leigh, Vivien, GWTW, 1939 (also 1951)

Leigh’s friends suggested she take a small role as a schoolgirl in the film Things Are Looking Up, which was her film debut, albeit uncredited as an extra. She engaged an agent, John Gliddon, who believed that “Vivian Holman” was not a suitable name for an actress. After rejecting his many suggestions, she took “Vivian Leigh” as her professional name.

Gliddon recommended her to Alexander Korda as possible film actress, but Korda rejected her as lacking potential. She was cast in the play The Mask of Virtue, directed by Sidney Carroll in 1935, and received excellent reviews. Korda admitted his error, and signed her to a film contract.

Leigh appeared with Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore and Maureen O’Sullivan in A Yank at Oxford (1938), which was her first film to receive attention in the US.

Hollywood was in the midst of a widely publicized search to find an actress to portray Scarlett O’Hara in David O. Selznick’s production of Gone with the Wind (1939). At the time, Myron Selznick—David’s brother and Leigh’s American theatrical agent—was the London representative of the Myron Selznick Agency. In February 1938, Leigh made a request to Myron  to be considered for the part of Scarlett O’Hara.

Actress Vs. Star

Selznick watched her performances in Fire Over England and A Yank at Oxford and thought she was excellent but in no way a possible Scarlett because she was “too British.” Gone with the Wind brought Leigh immediate attention and fame, but she was quoted as saying, “I’m not a film star—I’m an actress. Being a film star—just a film star—is such a false life, lived for fake values and for publicity. Actresses go on for a long time and there are always marvelous parts to play.”

The film won 10 Awards including a Best Actress award for Leigh, who also won a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress.

Rogers, Ginger, Kitty Foyle, 1940

Rogers’ first movie roles were in a trio of shorts made in 1929—Night in the Dormitory, A Day of a Man of Affairs, and Campus Sweethearts. In 1930, Paramount Pictures signed her to a seven-year contract.

Rogers got herself out of the Paramount contract—under which she had made five feature films at Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens—and moved with her mother to Hollywood. When she got to California, she signed a three-picture deal with Pathé Exchange. Two of her pictures at Pathé were Suicide Fleet (1931) and Carnival Boat (1932) in which she played opposite future Hopalong Cassidy star, William Boyd. Rogers also made features for Warner, Monogram, and Fox in 1932, and was named one of 15 WAMPAS Baby Stars. She then made a significant breakthrough as Anytime Annie in the Warner Bros. film 42nd Street (1933). She went on to make a series of films at Warner most notably in Gold Diggers of 1933 where her solo, “We’re In The Money”, included a verse in Pig Latin. She then moved to RKO Studios, was put under contract and started work on “Flying Down To Rio”, a picture starring Dolores Del Rio and Gene Raymond but it was soon stolen by Rogers and Broadway star Fred Astaire.

Fontaine, Joan, Suspicion, 1941

Fontaine signed a contract with RKO Pictures, and her first film for the studio was Quality Street (1937) starring Katharine Hepburn, in which Fontaine had a small unbilled role.

The studio considered her a rising star, and touted The Man Who Found Himself (1937) with John Beal as her first starring role, placing a special introduction, billed as the “new RKO screen personality” after the end credit. Fontaine later said it had “an A budget but a Z story.” RKO put her in You Can’t Beat Love (1937) with Preston Foster and Music for Madame (1937) with Nino Martini.

She next appeared in a major role alongside Fred Astaire in his first RKO film without Ginger Rogers, A Damsel in Distress (1937). Despite being directed by George Stevens, audiences were disappointed and the film flopped.

She was top billed in the comedies Maid’s Night Out (1938) and Blond Cheat (1938) then was Richard Dix’s leading lady in Sky Giant (1938).

Edward Small borrowed her to play Louis Hayward’s love interest in The Duke of West Point (1938), then Stevens used her at RKO in Gunga Din (1939) as Douglas Fairbanks Jr.’s love interest. The film was a huge hit, but Fontaine’s part was relatively small. Republic borrowed her to support Dix in Man of Conquest (1939) but her part was small. George Cukor gave her a small role in MGM’s The Women (1939).

Fontaine’s luck changed one night at a dinner party when she found herself seated next to producer David O. Selznick and he asked her to audition for the part of the unnamed heroine. She endured a grueling six-month series of film tests, along with hundreds of other actresses, before securing the part before her 22nd birthday.

Rebecca (1940 film), starring Laurence Olivier alongside Fontaine, marked the American debut of British director Hitchcock. The film was released to glowing reviews, and Fontaine was nominated for for Best Actress. Fontaine did not win that year (Ginger Rogers earned the award for Kitty Foyle), but she did win the following year for Best Actress in Suspicion, which co-starred Cary Grant and was also directed by Hitchcock.

This was the only Award-winning acting performance to have been directed by Hitchcock. (Quiz)

Fontaine was now one of the biggest female stars in Hollywood, although she was typecast in female melodrama. “They seemed to want to make me cry the whole Atlantic,” she later said.

Garson, Greer, Mrs. Miniver, 1942 (late bloomer)

Garson’s early professional appearances were on stage, starting at Birmingham Repertory Theatre in January 1932, when she was 27 years old. (rather old)

She appeared on TV during its earliest years (the late 1930s), most notably starring in a 30-minute production of an excerpt of Twelfth Night in May 1937, with Dorothy Black. These live transmissions were part of the BBC’s experimental service from Alexandra Palace, and this is the first known instance of a Shakespeare play performed on television In 1936, she appeared in the West End in Charles Bennett’s play Page From a Diary.

Discovered by

Louis B. Mayer discovered Garson while he was in London looking for new talent. Garson was signed to a contract with MGM in late 1937, but did not begin work on her first film, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, until late 1938. She received her first Oscar nomination for the role but lost to Vivien Leigh for Gone with the Wind. She received critical acclaim the next year for her role as Elizabeth Bennet in the 1940 film Pride and Prejudice.

Garson starred with Joan Crawford in When Ladies Meet, a 1941 poorly received and sanitized re-make of a Pre-Code version of the same name, which had starred Ann Harding and Myrna Loy. That same year, she became a major box-office star with the sentimental Technicolor drama Blossoms in the Dust.

Blossoms in the Dust brought her the second of 5 consecutive Best Actress nominations, tying Bette Davis’s 1938–1942 record, which still stands. (Quiz)

Garson starred in two Oscar nominated films in 1942: Mrs. Miniver and Random Harvest. She won the Best Actress for her performance as a strong British wife and mother protecting the Homefront during World War II in Mrs. Miniver, which co-starred Walter Pidgeon.

Jones, Jennifer, Song Bernadette, 1943

While husband Robert Walker found steady work in radio, Jones worked part-time modeling hats for the Powers Agency, and posing for Harper’s Bazaar while looking for possible acting jobs. When she learned of auditions for the lead in Claudia, Rose Franken’s hit play, in the summer of 1941, she presented herself to David O. Selznick’s New York office but fled in tears after what she thought was a bad reading. However, Selznick had overheard her audition and was impressed enough to have his secretary call her back. Following an interview, she was signed to a seven-year contract.

She was carefully groomed for stardom and given a new name: Jennifer Jones. Director Henry King was impressed by her screen test as Bernadette Soubirous for The Song of Bernadette (1943) and she won the coveted role over hundreds of applicants.

In 1944, on her 25th birthday, Jones won the Best Actress for her performance as Bernadette Soubirous, her third screen role.

Jones began an affair with producer Selznick. She separated from Walker in November 1943, co-starred with him in Since You Went Away (1944), and divorced him in June 1945. For her performance in Since You Went Away, she was nominated for her second Oscar, this time for Best Supporting Actress.

She earned a third successive Oscar nomination for her performance opposite Joseph Cotten in the film noir Love Letters (1945).

Ingrid Bergman, Gaslight, 1944, 1956

Bergman’s first film was as an extra in the 1932 film Landskamp, an experience she described as “walking on holy ground.” Her first speaking role was a small part in Munkbrogreven (1934). Bergman played Elsa, a maid in a seedy hotel, being pursued by the leading man, Edvin Adolphson. Soon after Bergman was offered a studio contract and placed under director Gustaf Molander.

She left the Royal Dramatic Theater to pursue acting full time.

Bergman starred in Ocean Breakers in which she played a fisherman’s daughter, and then in Swedenhielms, where she had the opportunity to work alongside her idol Gösta Ekman. Next, she starred in Walpurgis Night (1935). She plays Lena, a secretary in love with her boss, Johan who is unhappily married. Throughout, Lena and the wife vie for Johan’s affection with the wife losing her husband to Lena at the end.

In 1936, she appeared in Intermezzo, her first lead performance, where she was reunited with Gösta Ekman. This was a pivotal film for the young actress, and allowed her to demonstrate her talent.  In 1938, she starred in Only One Night and played a manor house girl, an upper-class woman living on a country estate. She didn’t like the part, calling it ‘a piece of rubbish.’ She only agreed to appear if only she could star in the studio’s next film project En kvinnas ansikte. She later acted in Dollar (1938), a Scandinivian screwball comedy. Bergman had just been voted Sweden’s most admired movie star in the previous year, and received top-billing.

In her next film, a role created especially for her, En kvinnas ansikte (A Woman’s Face), she played against her usual casting, as a bitter, unsympathetic character, whose face had been hideously burned. The film required Bergman to wear heavy makeup, as well as glue, to simulate a burned face. A brace was put in place to distort the shape of one cheek. In her diary, she called the film “my own picture, my very own. I have fought for it.” The film was awarded a Special Recommendation at the 1938 Venice Film Festival for its “overall artistic contribution.”

Bergman signed a three-picture contract with UFA, the German film company, although she only made one picture.  She was pregnant but nonetheless, she arrived in Berlin to begin filming The Four Companions (Die vier Gesellen)(1938), directed by Carl Froelich. The film was intended as star vehicle to launch Bergman’s career in Germany. In the film she played one of four ambitious young women, attempting to set up a graphic design agency. The film was a lighthearted combination of comedy and romance. At first, she did not comprehend the political and social situation in Germany. By September, she was back in Sweden, and gave birth to her daughter, Pia. She was never to work in Germany again.

Bergman appeared in 11 films in native Sweden before the age of 25. 

Her characters were plagued with uncertainty, fear and anxiety. The early Swedish films were not masterpieces, but she worked with some of the biggest talents in the Swedish film industry such as Gösta Ekman, Karin Swanström, Victor Sjöström, and Lars Hanson. It showcased her immense acting talent, as a young woman with a bright future.

Bergman’s first acting role in the U.S. was in Intermezzo: A Love Story by Gregory Ratoff which premiered on September 22, 1939. Hollywood producer David O. Selznick offered her to star in the English-language remake of her earlier Swedish film Intermezzo (1936). Unable to speak English, and uncertain about her acceptance by the American audience, she expected to complete this one film and return home to Sweden. Her husband, Dr. Petter Aron Lindström, remained in Sweden with their daughter Pia (born 1938). In Intermezzo, she played the role of a young piano accompanist, opposite Leslie Howard, who played a famous violin virtuoso. Bergman arrived in L.A. May 6, 1939, and stayed at the Selznick home until she could find another residence.

Selznick understood her fear of Hollywood make-up artists, who might turn her into someone she wouldn’t recognize, and “instructed them to lay off.” He was aware that her natural good looks would compete successfully with Hollywood’s “synthetic razzle-dazzle.”

Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce, 1945

Joan Crawford’s poor and instable family life meant lack of formal education beyond elementary school.  But her ambition from young age was to become a dancer.

When her stepfather Cassin was accused of embezzlement, he was blacklisted in Lawton, and the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri around 1916.

After her mother and stepfather broke up, she was sent by her mother to St. Agnes as a work student. She then went to Rockingham Academy, also as a work student.

In 1922, she registered at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, which she attended for 4 months before withdrawing.  She gave her birth year as 1906, but she was actually born in 1904 (or 1905).

Spotted

Crawford began dancing in the choruses of traveling revues and was spotted in Detroit by producer Jacob J. Shubert, who put her in the chorus line of his 1924 show, Innocent Eyes, at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway.

Loews Theaters publicist Nils Granlund arranged for screen test, which he then sent to producer Harry Rapfin.  MGM offered Crawford a contract at $75 a week on December 24, 1924. She arrived in California on January 1, 1925, after borrowing money for her travel.

As Lucille LeSueur, her first film was The Circle in 1925, followed by Pretty Ladies, starring ZaSu Pitts.

She also appeared in small roles in The Only Thing, Old Clothes and other films.

It was MGM publicity executive Pete Smith who suggested to change her name, because it sounded like “Le Sewer.”  A contest in the fan magazine Movie Weekly asked readers to select a name.  Initially, “Joan Arden” was selected, but as another actress had already claimed it, they went for the second choice, “Crawford.”

Crawford wanted her first name to be pronounced “Jo-Anne”–she hated the name Crawford because it sounded like “craw fish,” but she “liked the security” that went with the name.

Her first film, credited as Lucille LeSueur, was Lady of the Night in 1925, as a body double for MGM’s most popular star, Norma Shearer.

In the same year, she also appeared in The Circle and Pretty Ladies, starring comedian Zasu Pitts, followed with two unbilled roles in the silent films, The Only Thing and The Merry Widow.

Crawford then embarked on a campaign of self-promotion. MGM screenwriter Frederica Sagor Mass recalled, “No one decided to make Joan Crawford a star. Joan Crawford became a star because Joan Crawford decided to become a star.”

She attended dances at hotels around Hollywood, where she often won competitions, performing the Charleston and the Black Bottom.

Crawford competed with Norma Shearer, the studio’s then most-popular actress, who was married to MGM Head of Production, Irving Thalberg, and had first choice of scripts and greater control over her career.

In 1926, Crawford was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars, along with Mary Astor, Dolores del Rio, Janet Gaynor, Fay Wray.

Within few years, she became the romantic lead to many of MGM’s male stars, including Ramon Novarro, John Gilbert, William Haines, and Tim McCoy.

In 1927, Crawford appeared in The Unknown, starring Lon Chaney, Sr. as a carnival knife thrower with no arms. Crawford played his skimpily-clad young assistant. She learned more about acting from watching Chaney work than from anyone else: “It was then that I became aware for the first time of the difference between standing in front of a camera, and acting.”

In 1927, she appeared alongside William Haines in Spring Fever, the first of three movies they made together.

In 1928, Crawford starred opposite Ramon Novarro in Across to Singapore. But it was her role as Diana Medford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928) that catapulted her to stardom. The film established her as symbol of 1920s-style femininity, which rivaled Clara Bow, the It girl and Hollywood’s foremost flapper.

Several hits followed Our Dancing Daughters, including two more flapper movies, in which Crawford embodied an idealized vision of the free-spirited, all-American girl.

The novelist Scott Fitzgerald once wrote: “Joan Crawford is doubtless the best example of the flapper, the girl you see in smart night clubs, gowned to the apex of sophistication, toying iced glasses with a remote, faintly bitter expression, dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal, with wide, hurt eyes. Young things with a talent for living.

On June 3, 1929, Crawford married Douglas Fairbanks Jr. the son of Douglas Fairbanks, who was married to Mary Pickford, then Hollywood royalty. Fairbanks, Sr. and Pickford were opposed to the marriage, and did not invite the couple to their home for months.

In order to rid herself of her Southwestern accent, Crawford practiced diction and elocution, as she later recalled: “If I were to speak lines, it would be a good idea, I thought, to read aloud to myself, listen carefully to my voice quality and enunciation, and try to learn in that manner. I would lock myself in my room and read newspapers, magazines and books aloud. At my elbow, I kept a dictionary. When I came to a word I did not know how to pronounce, I looked it up and repeated it correctly.”

De Havilland, Olivia, To Each, 1946, 1949

Lilian and Walter met in Japan in 1913 and married the following year; the marriage was not a happy one due in part to Walter’s infidelities.

Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916. They moved into a large house in Tokyo City, where Lilian gave informal singing recitals. Olivia’s younger sister Joan (Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland)‍—‌later known as Joan Fontaine‍—‌was born 15 months later, on October 22, 1917. Both sisters became British subjects by birthright.

In February 1919, Lilian persuaded her husband to take the family back to England for a climate better suited to their ailing daughters. They sailed aboard the SS Siberia Maru to San Francisco, where the family stopped to treat Olivia’s tonsillitis. After Joan developed pneumonia, Lilian decided to remain with her daughters in California, where they eventually settled in Saratoga, 50 miles (80 km) south of San Francisco.

Her father abandoned the family and returned to his Japanese housekeeper, who eventually became his second wife.

Olivia was raised to appreciate the arts, beginning with ballet lessons at the age of four and piano lessons a year later.

She learned to read before she was six, and her mother, who taught drama, music, and elocution, had her recite passages from Shakespeare to strengthen her diction.

During this period, her younger sister Joan first started calling her “Livvie,”a  nickname that would last throughout her life. De Havilland entered Saratoga Grammar School in 1922 and did well in her studies.[12] She enjoyed reading, writing poetry, and drawing, and once represented her grammar school in a county spelling bee, coming in second place.

In 1923, Lilian had a new Tudor-style house built,[12] where the family resided until the early 1930s.[18] In April 1925, after her divorce was finalised, Lilian married George Milan Fontaine, a department store manager for O. A. Hale & Co. in San Jose. Fontaine was a good provider and respectable businessman, but his strict parenting style generated animosity and later rebellion in both stepdaughters.

De Havilland continued her education at Los Gatos High School in Saratoga. She excelled in oratory and field hockey and participated in school plays and the school drama club, eventually becoming the club’s secretary.

Planning to become a schoolteacher of English and speech, she attended Notre Dame Convent in Belmont.

In 1933, the teenager de Havilland made her debut in amateur theatre in Alice in Wonderland, a production of the Saratoga Community Players based on the novel by Lewis Carroll.

She also appeared in several school plays, including The Merchant of Venice and Hansel and Gretel. Her passion for drama eventually led to a confrontation with her stepfather, who forbade her from participating in extracurricular activities. When he learned that she had won the lead role of Elizabeth Bennet in a school fund-raising production of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, he told her that she had to choose between staying at home, or appearing in the production. Not wanting to let her school and classmates down, she left home, moving in with a family friend.

After graduating from high school in 1934, de Havilland was offered scholarship to Mills College in Oakland to pursue her chosen career as English teacher.

Spotted

She was also offered the role of Puck in the Saratoga Community Theater production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That summer, Austrian director Max Reinhardt came to California for a major new production of the same play to premiere at the Hollywood Bowl. After one of Reinhardt’s assistants saw her perform in Saratoga, he offered her the second understudy position for the role of Hermia. One week before the premiere, the understudy Jean Rouverol and lead actress Gloria Stuart left the project, leaving de Havilland, age 18, to play Hermia. Impressed with her performance, Reinhardt offered her the part in the four-week autumn tour that followed.

During that tour, Reinhardt was assigned to direct the Warner film version of his stage production, and he offered her the role of Hermia. With her mind still set on becoming a teacher, de Havilland initially wavered, but eventually, Reinhardt and executive producer Henry Blanke persuaded her to sign contract.

She signed five-year contract with Warner on November 12, 1934, with starting salary of $200 a week, marking the beginning of acting career which would span more than 50 years.

De Havilland made her screen debut in Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was filmed at Warner studios from December 19, 1934 to March 9, 1935. During the production, de Havilland picked up film acting techniques from the film’s co-director William Dieterle and camera techniques from cinematographer Hal Mohr, who was impressed with her questions about his work. By the end of filming, she had learned the effect of lighting and camera angles on how she appeared on screen.

Following premieres in New York City and Beverly Hills, the film was released on October 30, 1935. Despite the publicity campaign, the film generated little enthusiasm with audiences.

Two minor comedies followed, Alibi Ike with Joe E. Brown and The Irish in Us (both 1935) with James Cagney. In both films, she played the sweetly charming love interest‍—‌a role into which she would later become typecast.

After being a Reinhardt player, de Havilland felt disappointed being assigned these routine heroine roles. In March, de Havilland and her mother moved into an apartment at the Chateau des Fleurs at 6626 Franklin Avenue in Hollywood.

 

Young, Loretta, Farmer’s Daughter, 1947

Young was billed as Gretchen Young in the silent film Sirens of the Sea (1917). She was first billed as Loretta Young in 1928, in The Whip Woman. That same year, she co-starred with Lon Chaney in the MGM film Laugh, Clown, Laugh. The next year, she was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars.

In 1934 she co-starred with Cary Grant in Born to be Bad, and in 1935 was billed with Clark Gable and Jack Oakie in the film version of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, directed by William Wellman.

In 1947, she won an Oscar for her performance in The Farmer’s Daughter. That same year, she co-starred with Cary Grant and David Niven in The Bishop’s Wife, a perennial Xmas favorite.

(It was remade in 1996 as The Preacher’s Wife starring Denzel Washington, Whitney Houston & Courtney B. Vance).

Wyman, Jane, Johnny Belinda, 1948

Wyman obtained small parts in the films The Kid from Spain (as a “Goldwyn Girl”; 1932), Elmer, the Great (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Harold Teen (1934), College Rhythm (1934), Rumba (1935), All the King’s Horses (1935), George White’s 1935 Scandals (1935), Stolen Harmony (1935), Broadway Hostess (1935), King of Burlesque (1936) and Anything Goes (1936). She signed a contract with Warner Brothers in 1936.

At Warners she was in Freshman Love (1936) and Bengal Tiger (1936) then went to Universal for My Man Godfrey (1936), Stage Struck (1936), Cain and Mabel (1936), and Here Comes Carter (1936).

Wyman had her first big role in a Dick Foran Western The Sunday Round-Up (1936). Wyman had small parts in Polo Joe (1936), and Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936) but a bigger one in Smart Blonde (1936), the first of the Torchy Blane series.

Wyman was in Ready, Willing and Able (1937), The King and the Chorus Girl (1937), and Slim (1937). She had the lead in Little Pioneer (1937), a short, and parts in The Singing Marine (1937). She had a support part in Mr. Dodd Takes the Air (1937) and the female lead in some “B” The Spy Ring (1938) (at Universal), He Couldn’t Say No (1938) with Frank McHugh and Wide Open Faces (1938) with Joe E. Brown.

At Warners she had the lead in Brother Rat (1938), a “B” which proved popular, co-starring Ronald Reagan, Priscilla Lane, Wayne Morris and Eddie Albert.

Wyman was borrowed by Fox for support part in Tail Spin (1939), then did The Kid from Kokomo (1939) with Pat O’Brien and Morris. She played the title role in Torchy Blane. Playing with Dynamite (1939), but it was the last in the series.

Wyman was established as a leading lady of Bs – she did Kid Nightingale (1939) with John Payne, Private Detective (1939) with Foran, Brother Rat and a Baby (1940) with Reagan, An Angel from Texas (1940) with Albert, Flight Angels (1940), and Gambling on the High Seas (1940) with Wayne Morris.

She supported in My Love Came Back (1940), starring Olivia de Havilland and Jeffrey Lynn. She and Reagan were in Tugboat Annie Sails Again (1940). Wyman supported Ann Sheridan in Honeymoon for Three (1941) and was Dennis Morgan’s leading lady in Bad Men of Missouri (1941).

Wyman made The Body Disappears (1941) with Jeffrey Lynn and You’re in the Army Now (1941) with Jimmy Durante; in the latter she and Regis Toomey had the longest screen kiss in cinema history: 3 minutes and 5 seconds. Wyman did Larceny, Inc. (1942) with Edward G. Robinson, and My Favorite Spy (1942) with Kay Kyser.

At Fox, she supported Betty Grable in Footlight Serenade (1942) then back at Warners supported Olivia de Havilland in Princess O’Rourke (1943). Warners teamed her with Jack Carson in Make Your Own Bed (1944) and The Doughgirls (1944), then she was top billed in Crime by Night (1944). She was one of many stars to cameo in Hollywood Canteen (1944).

Wyman finally gained critical notice in the film noir The Lost Weekend (1945) made by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, who had been impressed by her performance in Princess O’Rourke. It was a supporting role–Ray Milland was the lead–but the second biggest part. Wyman called it “a small miracle.”

Wyman remained supporting actor in One More Tomorrow (1946), and Night and Day (1946). However, Wyman was borrowed by MGM for the female lead in The Yearling (1946), and was nominated for the 1946 Best Actress Oscar.

She was leading lady for Dennis Morgan in Cheyenne (1947) and James Stewart in RKO’s Magic Town (1947).

Her breakthrough role was playing a deaf-mute rape victim in Johnny Belinda (1948). Wyman spent over six months preparing for the film, which was an enormous hit and won Wyman a Best Actress Oscar.

She was the first person in the sound era to win an acting Oscar without speaking a line of dialogue.

De Havilland, Olivia, Heiress 1949 (See 1946)

Holliday, Judy, Born Yesterday, 1950

Holliday’s first film role, an airman’s wife in Twentieth Century Fox’s version of the U.S. Army Air Forces’ play Winged Victory (1944).

Holliday made her Broadway debut on March 20, 1945 at the Belasco Theatre in “Kiss Them for Me,” and was one of the recipients that year of the Clarence Derwent Award.

In 1946, she returned to Broadway as the scatterbrained Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday. Author Garson Kanin wrote the play for Jean Arthur, who played the role of Billie but left during out-of-town shows for personal reasons. Kanin then selected Holliday, two decades Arthur’s junior, as her replacement.

She received rave reviews for her performance in Born Yesterday on Broadway, and Cohn offered her the chance to repeat her role for the film version, but only after she did a screen test (which was used only as a “benchmark against which to evaluate” other actresses being considered for the role.

Leigh, Vivien, Streetcar Desire, 1951 (1939)

Booth, Shirley, Come Back, Sheba, 1952

When she was 7, Booth’s family moved to Philadelphia where she first became interested in acting after seeing a stage performance.

When Booth was a teenager, her family moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where she became involved in summer stock. She made her stage debut in a production of Mother Carey’s Chickens. Against her father’s protests, she dropped out of school and traveled to New York to further pursue a career. She initially used the name “Thelma Booth” when her father forbade her to use the family name professionally. She eventually changed her name to Shirley Booth.

Booth began her career onstage as a teenager, acting in stock company productions. She was a prominent actress in Pittsburgh theatre for a time, performing with the Sharp Company.

Her debut on Broadway was in the play, Hell’s Bells, opposite Humphrey Bogart on January 26, 1925.

Booth first attracted major notice as the female lead in the comedy hit Three Men on a Horse, which ran almost two years from 1935 to 1937.

During the 1930s and 1940s, she achieved popularity in dramas, comedies and, later, musicals.

She acted with Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story (1939), originated the role of Ruth Sherwood in the 1940 Broadway production of My Sister Eileen, and performed with Ralph Bellamy in Tomorrow the World (1943).

Booth also starred on the popular radio series Duffy’s Tavern, playing the lighthearted, wisecracking, man-crazy daughter of the unseen tavern owner on CBS radio from 1941 to 1942, and on NBC Blue from 1942 to 1943. Her then-husband, Ed Gardner, created and wrote the show, as well as played its lead character, Archie, the malapropping manager of the tavern; Booth left the show not long after the couple divorced.

She auditioned unsuccessfully for the title role of Our Miss Brooks in 1948; she had been recommended by Harry Ackerman, who was to produce the show, but Ackerman felt that Booth was too conscious of a high school teacher’s struggles to have full fun with the character’s comic possibilities.

Our Miss Brooks became a radio and television hit when the title role went to Eve Arden.

Booth received her first Tony Award, for Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Dramatic), for her performance as Grace Woods in Goodbye, My Fancy (1948).

Her second Tony was for Best Actress in a Play, which she received for her widely acclaimed performance as the tortured wife Lola Delaney in the poignant drama Come Back, Little Sheba (1950). Her leading man, Sidney Blackmer, received the Best Actor Tony in a Play for his performance as her husband, Doc.

Hepburn, Audrey, Roman Holiday, 1953

Hepburn was offered a small role in Monte Carlo Baby (French: Nous Irons à Monte Carlo, 1952), a film shot in English and French.

Spotted by Colette

Coincidentally, French novelist Colette was at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo during the filming, and decided to cast Hepburn in the title role in the Broadway play Gigi. Hepburn went into rehearsals having never spoken on stage, and required private coaching. When Gigi opened at the Fulton Theatre on November 24, 1951, she received praise for her performance, despite criticism that the stage version was inferior to the French film. The play ran for 219 performances, closing on May 31, 1952. It then went on tour, which began 13 October 1952 in Pittsburgh and visited Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Washington, D. C., and Los Angeles, before closing on May 16, 1953 in San Francisco.

Hepburn had her first starring role in Roman Holiday (1953), playing Princess Ann, a European princess who escapes the reins of royalty and has a wild night out with an American newsman (Gregory Peck).

The producers initially wanted Elizabeth Taylor for the role, but director William Wyler was so impressed by Hepburn’s screen test that he cast her instead.

Wyler later commented, “She had everything I was looking for: charm, innocence, and talent. She also was very funny. She was absolutely enchanting, we said, ‘That’s the girl!'” Originally, the film was to have had only Gregory Peck’s name above its title, with “Introducing Audrey Hepburn” beneath in smaller font. However, Peck suggested to Wyler to elevate her to equal billing so that her name appeared before the title, and in type as large as his: “You’ve got to change that because she’ll be a big star, and I’ll look like a big jerk.”

The film was a box-office success, and Hepburn gained critical acclaim for her portrayal, unexpectedly winning the Best Actress Oscar, a BAFTA Award for Best British Actress in a Leading Role.

 

Kelly, Grace, Country Girl, 1954

Showbiz Family

His brother Walter C. Kelly was a vaudeville star, who made films for MGM and Paramount, and another named George was Pulitzer Prize–winning dramatist, screenwriter, and director.

Kelly’s mother, Margaret Majer, of German descent, had taught physical education at the University of Pennsylvania and had been the first woman to coach women’s athletics at Penn. She also modeled for a time in her youth. After marrying John B. Kelly in 1924, Margaret focused on being a housewife until all her children were of school age, after which she began participating in various civic organizations.

Kelly had two older siblings, Margaret and John Jr., and a younger sister, Elizabeth, all raised in the Catholic faith.

Kelly grew up in a small, close-knit Catholic community. She was baptized and received her elementary education in the parish of Saint Bridget’s in East Falls. Founded in 1853 by Saint John Neumann, the fourth Bishop of Philadelphia, Saint Bridget’s was a relatively young parish, with families very familiar with one another.

While attending Ravenhill Academy, a reputable Catholic girls’ school, Kelly modeled fashions at local charity events with her mother and sisters. In 1942, at the age of 12, she played the lead in Don’t Feed the Animals, a play produced by the East Falls Old Academy Players.

In May 1947, she graduated from Stevens School, a socially prominent private institution in nearby Chestnut Hill, where she participated in drama and dance programs. Her graduation yearbook listed her favorite actress as Ingrid Bergman and her favorite actor as Joseph Cotten. Written in the “Stevens’ Prophecy” section was: “Miss Grace P. Kelly – a famous star of stage and screen.”

Due to low mathematics scores, Kelly was rejected by Bennington College in July 1947. Despite her parents’ initial disapproval, Kelly decided to pursue her dreams of becoming an actress. John was particularly displeased with her decision, as he viewed acting as “a slim cut above streetwalker” at the time.

To start her career, she auditioned for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, using a scene from her uncle George Kelly’s The Torch-Bearers (1923). Although the school had already met its semester quota, she obtained an interview with the admissions department, and was accepted through George’s influence.

Kelly worked diligently, and practiced speech by using tape recorder. She made her Broadway debut in Strindberg’s “The Father,” alongside Raymond Massey. At 19, her graduation performance was as Tracy Lord in “The Philadelphia Story.” George would continue to mentor Kelly throughout her acting career.

TV producer Delbert Mann cast Kelly as Bethel Merriday in an adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel of the same name; this was her first of nearly sixty live TV programs. As a theater personality, she was mentioned in Theatre World magazine as “most promising personality of the Broadway stage of 1950.”

Some of her well-known works as a theater actress were: The Father, The Rockingham Tea Set, The Apple Tree, The Mirror of Delusion, Episode (for Somerset Maugham’s tele-serial), among others.

Spotted

Impressed by her work in The Father, Henry Hathaway, director of Fourteen Hours (1951), offered her a small role, opposite Paul Douglas, Richard Basehart, and Barbara Bel Geddes, as young woman contemplating divorce. Kelly’s costar, Paul Douglas, commented of her acting: “In two senses, she did not have a bad side– you could film her from any angle, and she was one of the most untemperamental, cooperative people in the business.”

After the release of this film, the “Grace Kelly Fan Club” was established, gaining popularity across the country with local chapters springing up. Kelly referred to her fan club as “terrifically amusing”.

Kelly was noticed during a visit to the set of Fourteen Hours by Gary Cooper, who was charmed by her, and later stated that she had been “different from all these sexballs we’ve been seeing so much of.” However, Kelly’s performance in Fourteen Hours went unnoticed by critics, and did not contribute to her career. She continued her work in the theater and on TV, though she lacked “vocal horsepower,” and not many thought she would likely have lengthy stage career.

 

Magnani, Anna, Rose Tattoo, 1955

Magnani’s parentage and birthplace are uncertain. Some suggest she was born in Rome, others in Egypt. Her mother was Marina Magnani.  Director Zeffirelli states in his autobiography that she was born in Alexandria, Egypt, to an Italian-Jewish mother and Egyptian father, and that “only later did she become Roman when her grandmother brought her over and raised her in one of the Roman slum districts.”

Magnani herself stated that her mother was married in Egypt but returned to Rome before giving birth to her at Porta Pia, and did not know how the rumor of Egyptian birth got started.

She was enrolled in a French convent school in Rome where she learned to speak French and play the piano. She developed passion for acting from watching the nuns stage  Christmas plays. This period of formal education lasted until the age of 14.

She was a “plain, frail child with a forlornness of spirit.” Her grandparents compensated by pampering her with food and clothes. Yet while growing up, she was more at ease around “more earthly” companions, often befriending the “toughest kid on the block.” This trait carried over into her adult life: “I hate respectability. Give me the life of the streets, of common people.”

At age 17, she went on to study at the Eleonora Duse Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome for two years. To support herself, Magnani sang in nightclubs and cabarets; leading to her being dubbed “the Italian Édith Piaf.”  An actor friend, Micky Knox, writes that she “never studied acting formally” and started her career in Italian music halls singing traditional Roman Folk songs. “She was instinctive” he writes. “She had the ability to call up emotions at will, to move an audience, to convince them that life on the stage was as real and natural as life in their own kitchen.”

Magnani was considered an “outstanding theatre actress” in productions of Anna Christie and The Petrified Forest.

Discovered by Director Alessandrini

In 1933, Magnani was acting in experimental plays in Rome when she was discovered by Italian filmmaker Goffredo Alessandrini. The couple married the same year, and Alessandrini directed her in her first major film role in The Blind Woman of Sorrento (La Cieca di Sorrento, 1934). For director Vittorio De Sica, Magnani starred in Teresa Venerdì (Friday Theresa, 1941). De Sica called this Magnani’s “first true film”. She plays Loletta Prima, the girlfriend of De Sica’s character, Pietro Vignali. De Sica described Magnani’s laugh as “loud, overwhelming, and tragic”.

Magnani gained international renown as Pina in Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist Rome, Open City (Roma, città aperta, 1945). In a film about Italy’s final days under German occupation during World War II, Magnani’s character dies fighting to protect her husband, an underground fighter against the Nazis.

 

Bergman, Ingrid, Anastasia, 1956 (see 1944)

 

Woodward, Joanne, Three Faces Eve, 1957

Woodward lived in Thomasville until she was in the second grade, then lived in Blakely and Thomaston before her family relocated to Marietta, Georgia, where she attended Marietta High School. She remains a booster of Marietta High School and of the city’s Strand Theater.

They moved once again when she was a junior in high school after her parents divorced. She graduated from Greenville High School in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1947.

Woodward won many beauty contests as a teenager.

She appeared in theatrical productions at Greenville High and in Greenville’s Little Theatre, playing Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. (She returned to Greenville in 1976 to play Amanda Wingfield in another Little Theatre production of The Glass Menagerie. She also returned in 1955 for the première of Count Three And Pray, her debut movie, at the Paris Theatre on North Main Street.)

Training:

Woodward majored in drama at Louisiana State University, where she was an initiate of Chi Omega sorority, then headed to New York City to perform on  stage.

She also studied acting under Sanford Meisner in the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre.

Woodward got roles on TV shows such as Tales of Tomorrow, Goodyear Playhouse, Danger, The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse, You Are There, The Web, The Ford Television Theatre, The Elgin Hour, Robert Montgomery Presents, Armstrong Circle Theatre, The Star and the Story, Omnibus, Star Tonight, and Ponds Theater.

In 1953–1954, she understudied in the New York production of Picnic, which featured her future husband Paul Newman.

Woodward’s first film was a post-Civil War Western, Count Three and Pray (1955), in which she was billed second.

She was signed to a long-term contract by 20th Century Fox in January 1956.

Woodward guest starred on The 20th Century-Fox Hour, The United States Steel Hour, General Electric Theater, Four Star Playhouse, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Kraft Theatre, The Alcoa Hour, Studio One in Hollywood, and Climax!.

Woodward’s second feature film was A Kiss Before Dying (1956) with Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter, all under contract to Fox and loaned out to United Artists.

In 1956, Woodward returned to Broadway to star in The Lovers which only had a brief run (but was later filmed as The War Lord (1965).

Woodward was given the lead in her third feature, The Three Faces of Eve (1957), a commercial and critical success, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar.

Hayward, Susan, I Want t Live! 1958

Hayward was born Edythe Marrenner on June 30, 1917, in Brooklyn borough of New York City, the youngest of three children to Ellen (née Pearson; 1888–1958) and Walter Marrenner (1879–1938).

Her paternal grandmother, Katherine Harrigan, was an actress from County Cork, Ireland. Her mother was of Swedish descent. She had an older sister, Florence, and an older brother, Walter, Jr.

In 1924 Marrenner was hit by a car, suffering a fractured hip and broken legs that put her in a partial body cast with the resulting bone setting leaving her with distinctive hip swivel later in life.

Hayward was educated at Public School 181 and graduated from the Girls’ Commercial High School in June 1935 (later renamed Prospect Heights High School). Hayward attended that school in the mid-1930s, although she only recollects swimming for a dime during hot summers in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

During her high school years, she acted in school plays, and was named “Most Dramatic” by her class.

She began her career as a model, traveling to Hollywood in 1937 to try out for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Though Hayward did not get the part, she was used for other actors’ screen tests by David Selznick and received a contract at Warner.

Talent agent Max Arnow changed Marrenner’s name to Susan Hayward once she started her six-month contract for $50 a week with Warner’s.

Hayward had bit parts in Hollywood Hotel (1937), The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938) (her part was edited out), and The Sisters (1938), as well as in a short, Campus Cinderella (1938).

Hayward’s first sizeable role was with Ronald Reagan in Girls on Probation (1938), where she was 10th in billing.

She was also in Comet Over Broadway (1938), but returned to unbilled and began posing for pinup “cheesecake” publicity photos, something she and most actresses despised, but under her contract she had no choice. With Hayward’s contract at Warner finished, she moved on to Paramount Studios.

In 1939 Paramount signed her to a $250 per week contract. Hayward had her first breakthrough in the part of Isobel in Beau Geste (1939) opposite Gary Cooper and Ray Milland. She held the small, but important, haunting love of youth role as recalled by the Geste brothers while they searched for a valuable sapphire known as “the blue water” during desert service in the Foreign Legion; the film was hugely successful.

Paramount put Hayward as the second lead in Our Leading Citizen (1939) with Bob Burns and she then supported Joe E. Brown in $1000 a Touchdown (1939).

Hayward went to Columbia for a supporting role alongside Ingrid Bergman in Adam Had Four Sons (1941), then to Republic Pictures for Sis Hopkins (1941) with Judy Canova and Bob Crosby. Back at Paramount, she had the lead in a “B” film, Among the Living (1941).

Cecil B. De Mille gave her supporting role in Reap the Wild Wind (1942), costarring with Milland, John Wayne and Paulette Goddard.

She was in the short A Letter from Bataan (1942) and supported Goddard and Fred MacMurray in The Forest Rangers (1942).

Hayward costarred in I Married a Witch (1942) with Fredric March and Veronica Lake, as the fiancé of Wallace Wooly (March) before Lake’s witch appears in the 1940s from a Puritanical stake burning 300 years prior.

The film served as inspiration for the 1960s TV series Bewitched and was based on unfinished novel by Thorne Smith; it was made for Paramount but sold to United Artists. She was next in Paramount’s all-star musical review Star Spangled Rhythm (1943) that featured its nonmusical contract players as well.

 

Signoret, Simone, Room at Top, 1959

Signoret was born Simone Henriette Charlotte Kaminker in Wiesbaden, Germany, to André and Georgette (née Signoret) Kaminker, as the eldest of three children, with two younger brothers.

Her father, a pioneering interpreter who worked in the League of Nations, was a French-born army officer from a Polish Jewish family, who brought the family to Neuilly-sur-Seine on the outskirts of Paris. Her mother, Georgette, from whom she acquired her stage name, was a French Catholic.

Signoret grew up in Paris in an intellectual atmosphere and studied English, German and Latin.

After completing secondary school during the Nazi occupation, Simone was responsible for supporting her family. She was forced to take work as a typist for a French collaborationist newspaper, Les nouveaux temps, run by Jean Luchaire.

During the occupation, Signoret mixed with artistic group of writers and actors who met at the Café de Flore in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter.

She developed an interest in acting, and was encouraged by friends, including her lover, Daniel Gélin, to follow her ambition.

In 1942, she began appearing in bit parts and was able to earn enough money to support her mother and brothers. Her father, who was a French patriot, had fled the country in 1940 to join General De Gaulle in England. She took her mother’s maiden name for the screen to help hide her Jewish roots.

Typecast as Prostitute

Signoret’s sensual features and earthy nature led to typecasting–she was often seen in roles as a prostitute. She won considerable attention in La Ronde (1950), a film which was banned briefly in New York as immoral.

She won further acclaim, including acting award from the British Film Academy, for her portrayal of another prostitute in Jacques Becker’s Casque d’or (1951).

She appeared in many French films during the 1950s, including Thérèse Raquin (1953), directed by Marcel Carné; Les Diaboliques (1954) by Clouzot; and The Crucible (Les Sorcières de Salem; 1956), based on Arthur Miller’s The Crucible

Taylor, Elizabeth, BUtterfield 8, 1960, 1966

Child Actor

Occu Inheritance: Yes; mother retired stage actress

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born on February 27, 1932, at Heathwood, her family’s home on 8 Wildwood Road in Hampstead Garden Suburb, London.

She received dual British-American citizenship at birth, as her parents, art dealer Francis Lenn Taylor (1897–1968) and retired stage actress Sara Sothern (née Sara Viola Warmbrodt, 1895–1994), were US citizens, both originally from Arkansas City, Kansas. They moved to London in 1929 and opened art gallery on Bond Street; their first child, a son named Howard, was born the same year.

The family lived in London during Taylor’s childhood. Their social circle included artists such as Augustus John and Laura Knight, and politicians such as Colonel Victor Cazalet.[1]:11–19 Cazalet was Taylor’s unofficial godfather, and an important influence in her early life.

She was enrolled in Byron House, a Montessori school in Highgate, and was raised according to the teachings of Christian Science, the religion of her mother and Cazalet.

In early 1939, the Taylors decided to return to the US due to fear of impending war in Europe. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy contacted her father, urging him to return to the US with his family.[6] Sara and the children left first in April 1939 aboard the ocean liner SS Manhattan, and moved in with Taylor’s maternal grandfather in Pasadena, California. Francis stayed behind to close the London gallery, and joined them in December.

In early 1940, he opened a new gallery in Los Angeles. After briefly living in Pacific Palisades with the Chapman family, the Taylor family settled in Beverly Hills, where the two children were enrolled in Hawthorne School.

In California, Taylor’s mother was told that her daughter should audition for films.

Taylor’s eyes in particular drew attention; they were blue, to the extent of appearing violet, and were rimmed by dark double eyelashes caused by a genetic mutation.[8][1]:9 Sara was initially opposed to Taylor appearing in films, but after the outbreak of war in Europe made return there unlikely, she began to view the film industry as a way of assimilating to American society.

Francis Taylor’s Beverly Hills gallery had gained clients from the film industry soon after opening, helped by the endorsement of gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, a friend of the Cazalets. Through a client and a school friend’s father, Taylor auditioned for both Universal Pictures and MGM in early 1941. Both studios offered Taylor contracts, and Sara Taylor chose to accept Universal’s offer.

Taylor began her contract in April 1941 and was cast in a small role in There’s One Born Every Minute (1942).

She did not receive other roles, and her contract was terminated after a year.

Universal’s casting director explained her dislike of Taylor: “the kid has nothing … her eyes are too old, she doesn’t have the face of a child”. Taylor looked different from the child stars of the era, such as Shirley Temple and Judy Garland.[5]:32 Taylor later said that, “apparently, I used to frighten grown ups, because I was totally direct”.

Taylor received another opportunity in late 1942, when her father’s acquaintance, MGM producer Samuel Marx, arranged for her to audition for  minor role in Lassie Come Home (1943), which required a child actress with  English accent . After a trial contract of three months, she was given a standard seven-year contract in January 1943.

Following Lassie, she appeared in minor uncredited roles in two other films set in England: Jane Eyre (1943), and The White Cliffs of Dover (1944).

 

Loren, Sophia, Two Women, 1961

Sofia Villani Scicolone Dame Grand Cross OMRI (Italian: born September 20, 1934), known professionally as Sophia Loren, is an Italian actress. A recognizable star of Hollywood’s Golden Age, she was named by the American Film Institute as the 21st greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema. She is currently the only living actress and the highest ranked living person on the list.

Encouraged to enroll in acting lessons after entering a beauty pageant, Loren began her film career at age 16 in 1950. She appeared in several bit parts and minor roles in the early part of the decade, until her five-picture contract with Paramount in 1956 launched her international career. Notable film appearances around this time include The Pride and the Passion, Houseboat, and It Started in Naples.

Loren’s performance as Cesira in the movie Two Women (1961) directed by Vittorio De Sica earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress, making her the first actor or actress to win an Oscar for a foreign-language performance. She holds the record for having earned six David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress: Two Women; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963); Marriage Italian Style (1964) (for which she was nominated for a second Oscar); Sunflower (1970); The Voyage (1974); and A Special Day (1977).

After starting a family in the early 1970s, Loren chose to make rarer film appearances. Most recently, she has appeared in American films such as Grumpier Old Men (1995) and Nine (2009).

She has also won a Grammy Award, five special Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award), a BAFTA Award, a Laurel Award, the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 1991, she received the Honorary Award for lifetime achievements, one of many such awards.

Sofia Villani Scicolone was born on September 20, 1934 in the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome, Italy, the daughter of Romilda Villani (1910–1991) and Riccardo Scicolone, a construction engineer of noble descent (Loren wrote in her autobiography that she is entitled to call herself the Marchioness of Licata Scicolone Murillo).

Loren’s father, Riccardo Scicolone, refused to marry Villani, leaving the piano teacher and aspiring actress without financial support. Loren met with her father three times, at age five, age 17, and in 1976 at his deathbed, citing that she forgave him but had never forgotten his abandonment of her mother.

Loren’s parents had another child together, her sister Maria, in 1938. Loren has two younger paternal half-brothers, Giuliano and Giuseppe. Romilda, Sofia, and Maria lived with Loren’s grandmother in Pozzuoli, near Naples.

During the Second World War, the harbor and munitions plant in Pozzuoli was a frequent bombing target of the Allies. During one raid, as Loren ran to the shelter, she was struck by shrapnel and wounded in the chin. After that, the family moved to Naples, where they were taken in by distant relatives.

After the war, Loren and her family returned to Pozzuoli. Loren’s grandmother Luisa opened a pub in their living room, selling homemade cherry liquor. Romilda Villani played the piano, Maria sang, and Loren waited on tables and washed dishes. The place was popular with the American GIs stationed nearby.

At age 15, Loren as Sofia Lazzaro entered the Miss Italia 1950 beauty pageant and was assigned as Candidate #2, being one of the four contestants representing the Lazio region. She was selected as one of the last three finalists and won the title of “Miss Elegance 1950,” while Liliana Cardinale won the title of “Miss Cinema” and Anna Maria Bugliari won the grand title of Miss Italia.

She returned in 2001 as president of the jury for the 61st edition of the pageant. In 2010, Loren crowned the 71st Miss Italia pageant winner.

At age 17, as Sofia Lazzaro, she enrolled in the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the national film school of Italy and appeared as an uncredited extra in Mervyn LeRoy’s 1951 film Quo Vadis, when she was 17 years old.

That same year, she appeared in the Italian film Era lui… sì! sì!, in which she played an odalisque, and was credited as Sofia Lazzaro.

In the early part of the decade, she played bit parts and had minor roles in several films, including La Favorita (1952).

Carlo Ponti changed her name and public image to appeal to a wider audience as Sophia Loren, being a twist on the name of the Swedish actress Märta Torén and suggested by Goffredo Lombardo. Her first starring role was in Aida (1953), for which she received critical acclaim.

After playing the lead role in Two Nights with Cleopatra (1953), her breakthrough role was in The Gold of Naples (1954), directed by Vittorio De Sica.

Too Bad She’s Bad, also released in 1954, and La Bella Mugnaia (1955) became the first of many films in which Loren co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni.

Over the next three years, she acted in many films, including Scandal in Sorrento, Lucky to Be a Woman, Boy on a Dolphin, Legend of the Lost, and The Pride and the Passion.

Loren became an international star following her five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures in 1958. Among her films at this time were Desire Under the Elms with Anthony Perkins, based upon the Eugene O’Neill play; Houseboat, a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant; and George Cukor’s Heller in Pink Tights, in which she appeared as a blonde for the first time.

In 1960, she starred in Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women, a stark, gritty story of a mother who is trying to protect her 12-year-old daughter in war-torn Italy. The two end up gang-raped inside a church as they travel back to their home city following cessation of bombings there.

Originally cast as the daughter, Loren fought against type and was eventually cast as the mother (actress Eleonora Brown would portray the daughter). Loren’s performance earned her many awards, including the Cannes Film Festival’s best performance prize, and an Oscar Award for Best Actress, the first major Academy Award for a non-English-language performance or to an Italian actress.

She won 22 international awards for Two Women. The film was extremely well received by critics and a huge commercial success. Though proud of this accomplishment, Loren did not show up to this award, citing fear of fainting at the award ceremony. Cary Grant called her in Rome the next day to inform her of the Oscar award.

Bancroft, Anne, Miracle Worker, 1962

Bancroft was born Anna Maria Louisa (or Luisa) Italiano in the Bronx, New York, the middle of three daughters of Mildred (née DiNapoli; 1908–2010), a telephone operator, and Michael G. Italiano (1905–2001), a dress pattern maker.

Bancroft’s parents were both children of Italian immigrants. In an interview, she stated that her family was originally from Muro Lucano, in the province of Potenza.[6] She was Roman Catholic.[7] She was raised in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx,[8] later moving to 1580 Zerega Ave. and graduating from Christopher Columbus High School in 1948. She later attended HB Studio,[9] the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Actors Studio and the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women at the University of California, Los Angeles. After appearing in a number of live television dramas under the name Anne Marno, she was told to change her surname, as it was “too ethnic for movies”; she chose Bancroft “because it sounded dignified.”[10]

Career
In 1957, Bancroft was directed by Jacques Tourneur in a David Goodis adaptation, Nightfall. In 1958, she made her Broadway debut as lovelorn, Bronx-accented Gittel Mosca opposite Henry Fonda (as the married man Gittel loves) in William Gibson’s two-character play Two for the Seesaw, directed by Arthur Penn.[10][11] For this role, she won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play.

Bancroft won the Tony Award for Leading Actress in a Play in 1960, again with playwright Gibson and director Penn, when she played Annie Sullivan, the young woman who teaches the child Helen Keller to communicate in The Miracle Worker. She appeared in the 1962 film version of the play and won the 1962 Academy Award for Best Actress, with Patty Duke repeating her own success as Keller alongside Bancroft.[13] Because Bancroft had returned to Broadway to star in Mother Courage and Her Children, Joan Crawford accepted the Oscar on her behalf, and later presented the award to her in New York.

Bancroft co-starred as a medieval nun obsessed with a priest (Jason Robards) in the 1965 Broadway production of John Whiting’s play The Devils. Produced by Alexander H. Cohen and directed by Michael Cacoyannis, it ran for 63 performances.

“Annie’s a very gutsy girl. I swear I wouldn’t hesitate to put her in at shortstop for the New York Yankees.” Arthur Penn

 

Neal, Patricia, Hud, 1963

Neal was born in Packard, Whitley County, Kentucky, to William Burdette Neal (1895–1944) and Eura Mildred (née Petrey) Neal (1899–2003). She had two siblings.

She grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she attended Knoxville High School, and studied drama at Northwestern University where she was member of Pi Beta Phi sorority. At Northwestern, she was crowned Syllabus Queen in a campus-wide beauty pageant.

Neal gained her first job in New York as understudy in the Broadway production of the John Van Druten play The Voice of the Turtle. Next, she appeared in Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest (1946), winning the 1947 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play, in the first presentation of the Tony awards.

Neal made her film debut with Ronald Reagan in John Loves Mary, followed by another role with Reagan in The Hasty Heart, and then The Fountainhead (all 1949). she had an affair with her married co-star, Gary Cooper, with whom she worked again in Bright Leaf (1950).

Neal starred with John Garfield in The Breaking Point (1950), in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) with Michael Rennie, and in Operation Pacific (also 1951) starring John Wayne.

She suffered a nervous breakdown, after the end of her relationship with Cooper, and left Hollywood for New York, returning to Broadway in 1952 for a revival of The Children’s Hour.

In 1955, she starred in Edith Sommer’s A Roomful of Roses, staged by Guthrie McClintic.

While in New York, Neal became a member of the Actors Studio. Based on connections with other members, she subsequently co-starred in the film A Face in the Crowd (1957, directed by Elia Kazan), the play The Miracle Worker (1959, directed by Arthur Penn), the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961, co-starring George Peppard), and the film Hud (1963), directed by Martin Ritt and starring Paul Newman.

She appeared on TV in an episode of The Play of the Week (1960), featuring an Actors Studio-dominated cast in a double bill of plays by August Strindberg, and in a British production of Clifford Odets’ Clash by Night (1959), which co-starred one of the first generation of Actors Studio members, Nehemiah Persoff.

Lead or Supporting

Neal won the Best Actress for her performance in Hud (1963), co-starring with Paul Newman. Initially released it was predicted she would be a nominee in the supporting actress category, but when she began collecting awards, they were always for Best Actress, from the New York Film Critics, the National Board of Review and a BAFTA award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

 

Andrews Julie, Mary Poppins, 1964

Elizabeth Wells was born on 1 October 1935 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England.[4][5] Her mother, Barbara Ward Wells (née Morris; 1910–1984) was born in Chertsey[6] and married Edward Charles “Ted” Wells (1908–1990), a teacher of metalwork and woodwork, in 1932. Andrews was conceived as a result of an affair her mother had with a family friend. Andrews discovered her true parentage from her mother in 1950, although it was not publicly disclosed until her 2008 autobiography.

With the outbreak of World War II, Barbara and Ted Wells went their separate ways and were soon divorced. Each remarried: Barbara to Ted Andrews, in 1943, and Ted Wells in 1944 to Winifred Maud (Hyde) Birkhead, a war widow and former hairstylist working a lathe at a war work factory that employed them both in Hinchley Wood, Surrey. Ted Wells assisted with evacuating children to Surrey during the Blitz, while Barbara joined Ted Andrews in entertaining the troops through the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA).

Andrews lived briefly with Ted Wells and her brother John in Surrey. In 1940, Ted Wells sent young Julia to live with her mother and stepfather, whom the elder Wells thought would be better able to provide for his talented daughter’s artistic training. According to Julie Andrews’ 2008 autobiography Home, while Julie had been used to calling Ted Andrews “Uncle Ted”, her mother suggested it would be more appropriate to refer to her stepfather as “Pop”, while her father remained “Dad” or “Daddy” to her. Julie disliked this change.

The Andrews family was “very poor” and they “lived in a bad slum area of London,” Andrews recalled, adding, “That was a very black period in my life.” According to Andrews, her stepfather was violent and an alcoholic. Ted Andrews twice, while drunk, tried to get into bed with his stepdaughter, resulting in Andrews fitting a lock on her door.[10] As the stage career of Ted and Barbara Andrews improved, they were able to afford better surroundings, first to Beckenham and then, as the war ended, back to the Andrews’ hometown of Hersham. The Andrews family took up residence at the Old Meuse, in West Grove, Hersham, a house (now demolished) where Andrews’ maternal grandmother had served as a maid.

Andrews’ stepfather sponsored lessons for her, first at the independent arts educational school Cone-Ripman School (now known commonly as ArtsEd) in London, and thereafter with concert soprano and voice instructor Madame Lilian Stiles-Allen. “She had an enormous influence on me,” Andrews said of Stiles-Allen, adding, “She was my third mother – I’ve got more mothers and fathers than anyone in the world.” In her memoir Julie Andrews – My Star Pupil, Stiles-Allen records, “The range, accuracy and tone of Julie’s voice amazed me … she had possessed the rare gift of absolute pitch”,[15]:22 though Andrews herself refutes this in her 2008 autobiography Home.[8][16] According to Andrews, “Madame was sure that I could do Mozart and Rossini, but, to be honest, I never was”.[15]:24 Of her own voice, she says, “I had a very pure, white, thin voice, a four-octave range – dogs would come from miles around. After Cone-Ripman School, Andrews continued her academic education at the nearby Woodbrook School, a local state school in Beckenham.

Beginning in 1945, and for the next two years, Julie Andrews performed spontaneously and unbilled on stage with her parents. “Then came the day when I was told I must go to bed in the afternoon because I was going to be allowed to sing with Mummy and Pop in the evening,” Andrews explained. She would stand on a beer crate to sing into the microphone, sometimes a solo or as a duet with her stepfather, while her mother played piano. “It must have been ghastly, but it seemed to go down all right.”

Christie, Julie, Darling, 1965

Christie was born on 14 April 1940 at Singlijan Tea Estate, Chabua, Assam, British India. She has a younger brother, Clive, and an older (now deceased) half-sister, June, from her father’s relationship with Indian woman, who worked as tea picker on his plantation. Her parents separated when Julie was a child.

She was baptised in the Church of England, and studied as a boarder at the independent Convent of Our Lady school in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, after being expelled from another convent school for telling a risqué joke. She later attended Wycombe Court School, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire; she lived with foster mother from the age of six.

After her parents’ divorce, Christie spent time with her mother in rural Wales. As a teenager at the all-girls’ Wycombe Court School, she played “the Dauphin” in a production of Shaw’s Saint Joan. She later studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

Christie made her professional stage debut in 1957, and her first screen roles were on British TV.

Her earliest role to gain attention was in BBC serial A for Andromeda (1961).

She was a contender for the role of Honey Rider in the first James Bond film, Dr. No, but producer Albert R. Broccoli thought her breasts were too small.

Christie appeared in two comedies for Crooks Anonymous and The Fast Lady (both 1962). Her breakthrough role, however, was as Liz, the friend and would-be lover of the eponymous character played by Tom Courtenay in Billy Liar (1963), for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination. Director John Schlesinger cast Christie only after another actress, Topsy Jane, had dropped out of the film. Christie appeared as Daisy Battles in Young Cassidy (1965), a biopic of Irish playwright Seán O’Casey, co-directed by Jack Cardiff and (uncredited) John Ford.

Her role as amoral model in Darling (also 1965) led to international fame. Directed by Schlesinger, and co-starring Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey, Christie had only been cast in the lead after Schlesinger insisted; the studio wanted Shirley MacLaine. She received the Best Actress Oscar and the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress in Leading Role for her performance.

In David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago (also 1965), adapted from the novel by Boris Pasternak, Christie’s role as Lara Antipova became her best known. The film was a major box-office success. As of 2019, Doctor Zhivago is the 9th highest-grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation. According to Life magazine, 1965 was “The Year of Julie Christie.” After dual roles in François Truffaut’s adaptation of the Ray Bradbury novel

Smith, Maggie, 1969, Prime of Jean Brodie

Margaret Natalie Smith was born in Ilford, Essex, on December 28, 1934. Her mother, Margaret Hutton (née Little; 1896–1977), was a Scottish secretary from Glasgow, and father, Nathaniel Smith (1902–1991), was public health pathologist from Newcastle upon Tyne, who worked at the University of Oxford.

During her childhood, Smith’s parents told her romantic story of how they had met on the train from Glasgow to London via Newcastle. She moved with her family to Oxford when she was four. She had older twin brothers, Alistair (died 1981) and Ian. The latter went to architecture school.

Smith attended Oxford High School until age 16, when she left to study acting at the Oxford Playhouse.

In 1952, aged 17, under the auspices of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, Smith began her career as Viola in Twelfth Night at the Oxford Playhouse.

In 1954, she appeared in the TV program Oxford Accents produced by Ned Sherrin.

She appeared in her first film in 1956, in an uncredited role in Child in the House, and made her Broadway debut the same year playing several roles in the review New Faces of ’56, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre from June to December 1956.

In 1957, she starred opposite Kenneth Williams in the musical comedy “Share My Lettuce,” written by Bamber Gascoigne.

In 1959, she received the first of her 18 BAFTA Film and TV nominations for her role in the film Nowhere to Go.

In 1962, Smith won the first of a record six Best Actress Evening Standard Awards for her roles in Peter Shaffer’s plays The Private Ear and The Public Eye, again opposite Kenneth Williams.

She became a fixture at the Royal National Theatre in the 1960s, most notably for playing Desdemona in Othello opposite Laurence Olivier, and earning her first Oscar nomination for her performance in the 1965 film version.

She appeared opposite Olivier in Ibsen’s The Master Builder, and played comedic roles in The Recruiting Officer and Much Ado About Nothing.

Her other films at this time included Go to Blazes (1962), The V.I.P.s (1963), The Pumpkin Eater (1964), Young Cassidy (1965), Hot Millions (1968), and Oh! What A Lovely War (1969).

 

Jackson, Glenda, 1970, 1973, Women in Love, Touch of Class

May Jackson CBE (born May 9, 1936) is a British actress and politician. She has won the Best Actress Oscar twice, receiving the first for her role as Gudrun Brangwen in the romantic drama film Women in Love (1970) and the second for her role as Vickie Allessio in the romantic comedy film A Touch of Class (1973).

She also received praise for her performances as Alex Greville in the drama film Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) and Elizabeth I in the BBC television serial Elizabeth R (1971), winning two Primetime Emmy Awards for the latter.

In 2018, she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role in a revival of Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, thus becoming one of the few performers to have achieved the “Triple Crown of Acting” in the US.

Jackson took a hiatus from acting to take on a career in politics from 1992 to 2015, and was elected as the Labour Party MP for Hampstead and Highgate in the 1992 general election. She served as a junior transport minister from 1997 to 1999 during the government of Tony Blair, later becoming critical of Blair. After constituency-boundary changes, she represented Hampstead and Kilburn from 2010. In the 2010 general election, her majority of 42 votes was one of the closest results of the entire election. She stood down at the 2015 general election and returned to acting.

Glenda May Jackson was born on 9 May 1936 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, where her father was a builder and her mother worked in shops and as a cleaner.

She was educated at West Kirby County Grammar School for Girls in nearby West Kirby, and performed at the Townswomen’s Guild drama group during her teens. She worked for two years in Boots before taking up a scholarship in 1954 to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).

Jackson made her professional stage debut in Terence Rattigan’s Separate Tables in 1957 while at RADA and appeared in repertory for the next six years.

Her film debut was a bit part in This Sporting Life (1963). A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) for four years from 1964, she originally joined for director Peter Brook’s Theatre of Cruelty season, which included Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade (1965), in which she played an inmate of an insane asylum portraying Charlotte Corday, the assassin of Jean-Paul Marat. The production ran on Broadway in 1965 and in Paris (Jackson appeared in the 1967 film version). Jackson also appeared as Ophelia in Peter Hall’s production of Hamlet in the same year. Critic Penelope Gilliatt thought Jackson was the only Ophelia she had seen who was ready to play the Prince himself.

The RSC’s staging at the Aldwych Theatre of US (1966), a protest play against the Vietnam War, also featured Jackson, and she appeared in its film version, Tell Me Lies. Later that year, she starred in the psychological drama Negatives (1968), which was not a huge financial success, but won her more good reviews.

Jackson’s starring role in Ken Russell’s film adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (1969) led to her winning her first Best Actress.  Encyclopedia of British Film: “Her blazing intelligence, sexual challenge and abrasiveness were at the service of a superbly written role in a film with a passion rare in the annals of British cinema.”

 

Fonda, Jane, 1971, 1978, Klute, Coming Home

Jane Seymour Fonda was born in New York City on December 21, 1937. Her parents were Canadian-born socialite Frances Ford Brokaw (née Seymour; 1908–1950) and American actor Henry Fonda (1905–1982).

According to her father, the surname Fonda came from an Italian ancestor who immigrated to the Netherlands in the 1500s.[7] There, he intermarried; the resultant family began to use Dutch given names, with Jane’s first Fonda ancestor reaching New York in 1650.[8][9][10] Fonda also has English, French, and Scottish ancestry. She was named for the third wife of Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, to whom she is distantly related on her mother’s side,[11] and because of whom, until she was in fourth grade, Fonda said she was called “Lady” (as in Lady Jane).[12] Her brother, Peter Fonda (1940–2019), was also an actor, and her maternal half-sister is Frances de Villers Brokaw (also known as “Pan”), whose daughter is Pilar Corrias, the owner of the Pilar Corrias Gallery in London.[13]

In 1950, when Fonda was 12, her mother died by suicide while undergoing treatment at Craig House psychiatric hospital in Beacon, New York.[14][15] Later that year, Henry Fonda married the socialite Susan Blanchard (born 1928), 23 years his junior; this marriage ended in divorce. Aged 15, Jane taught dance at Fire Island Pines, New York.

Fonda attended Greenwich Academy in Greenwich, Connecticut; the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York; and Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.[17] Before her acting career, she was a model and appeared twice on the cover of Vogue.[18]

Fonda became interested in acting as a teenager while appearing with her father in a charity performance of The Country Girl at the Omaha Community Playhouse.[18] After dropping out of Vassar, she went to Paris for six months to study art.[19] Upon returning to the US, in 1958, she met Lee Strasberg; the meeting changed the course of her life. Fonda said, “I went to the Actors Studio and Lee Strasberg told me I had talent. Real talent. It was the first time that anyone, except my father – who had to say so – told me I was good. At anything. It was a turning point in my life. I went to bed thinking about acting. I woke up thinking about acting. It was like the roof had come off my life!”

Fonda’s stage work in the late 1950s laid the foundation for her film career in the 1960s. She averaged almost two movies a year throughout the decade, starting in 1960 with Tall Story, in which she recreated one of her Broadway roles as a college cheerleader pursuing a basketball star, played by Anthony Perkins. Frequent collaborator Robert Redford also made his debut in that film. Period of Adjustment and Walk on the Wild Side followed in 1962. The latter, in which she played a prostitute, earned her a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer. In 1963, she appeared in Sunday in New York. Newsday called her “the loveliest and most gifted of all our new young actresses”. However, she also had detractors – in the same year, the Harvard Lampoon named her the “Year’s Worst Actress” for The Chapman Report.

Fonda’s career breakthrough came with Cat Ballou (1965), in which she played a schoolmarm-turned-outlaw. This comedy Western received five Oscar nominations, with Lee Marvin winning best actor, and was one of the year’s top ten films at the box office. It was considered by many to have been the film that brought Fonda to bankable stardom. The following year, she had a starring role in The Chase opposite Robert Redford, in their first film together, and two-time Oscar winner Marlon Brando. The film received some positive reviews, but Fonda’s performance was noticed by Variety magazine: “Jane Fonda, as Redford’s wife and the mistress of wealthy oilman James Fox, makes the most of the biggest female role.”[23] After this came the comedies Any Wednesday (1966), opposite Jason Robards and Dean Jones, and Barefoot in the Park (1967), again co-starring Redford.

In 1968, she played the title role in the science fiction spoof Barbarella, which established her status as a sex symbol. In contrast, the tragedy They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) won her critical acclaim and marked a significant turning point in her career; Variety magazine wrote, “Fonda, as the unremittingly cynical loser, the tough and bruised babe of the Dust Bowl, gives a dramatic performance that gives the film a personal focus and an emotionally gripping power.”[24] In addition, renowned film critic Pauline Kael, in her New Yorker review of the film, noted of Fonda: “[She] has been a charming, witty nudie cutie in recent years and now gets a chance at an archetypal character. Fonda goes all the way with it, as screen actresses rarely do once they become stars. She doesn’t try to save some ladylike part of herself, the way even a good actress like Audrey Hepburn does, peeping at us from behind “vulgar” roles to assure us she’s not really like that. Fonda stands a good chance of personifying American tensions and dominating our movies in the seventies as Bette Davis did in the thirties.” For her performance, she won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress and earned her first Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Fonda was very selective by the end of the decade, turning down lead roles in Rosemary’s Baby and Bonnie and Clyde.

In the 1970s, Fonda enjoyed her most critically acclaimed period as an actress despite some setbacks for her ongoing activism. According to writer and critic Hilton Als, her performances starting with They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? “heralded a new kind of acting: for the first time, she was willing to alienate viewers, rather than try to win them over. Fonda’s ability to continue to develop her talent is what sets her apart from many other performers of her generation.

Minnelli, Liza, 1972, Cabaret

Liza Minnelli was born on March 12, 1946, in Los Angeles, She is the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli. Her parents named her after Ira Gershwin’s song “Liza (All the Clouds’ll Roll Away)”. Minnelli has a half-sister, Lorna, and half-brother, Joey, from Garland’s marriage to Sid Luft. She has another half-sister, Christiane Nina Minnelli (nicknamed Tina Nina), from her father’s second marriage. Minnelli’s godparents were Kay Thompson and her husband William Spier.

Her first performing experience on film was at age three appearing in the final scene of the musical In the Good Old Summertime (1949); the film stars Garland and Van Johnson. In 1961 she moved to New York City, attending High School of Performing Arts and later, Chadwick School.

During 1961, Minnelli was an apprentice at the Cape Cod Melody Tent in Hyannis, Massachusetts. She appeared in the chorus of Flower Drum Song and played the part of Muriel in Take Me Along. She began performing professionally at age 17 in 1963 in an Off-Broadway revival of the musical Best Foot Forward, for which she received the Theatre World Award.

The next year, her mother invited her to perform with her in concert at the London Palladium. Both concerts were recorded and released as an album. She attended Scarsdale High School for one year, starring in a production of The Diary of Anne Frank which then went to Israel on tour. She turned to Broadway at 19, and won her first Tony Award as leading actress for Flora the Red Menace. It was the first time that she worked with the musical pair John Kander and Fred Ebb.

Minnelli began as nightclub singer as an adolescent, making her professional nightclub debut at the age of 19 at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. That same year she began appearing in other clubs and on stage in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and New York City. Her success as a live performer led to her record several albums for Capitol Records: Liza! Liza! (1964), It Amazes Me (1965), and There Is a Time (1966). In her early years, she recorded traditional pop standards as well as show tunes from various musicals in which she starred. William Ruhlmann named her “Barbra Streisand’s little sister.”

Jackson, Glenda, Touch Class, 1973 (see 1970)

Burstyn, Ellen, Alice Doesn’t, 1974

Burstyn was born Edna Rae Gillooly (later Ellen McRae) in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Correine Marie (née Hamel) and John Austin Gillooly.

She has described her ancestry as “Irish, French, Pennsylvania Dutch, a little Canadian Indian”. Burstyn has an older brother, Jack, and a younger brother, Steve.

Her parents divorced when she was young, and she and her brothers lived with their mother and stepfather.

Burstyn attended Cass Technical High School, a university-preparatory school which allowed students to choose a specific field of study. Burstyn majored in fashion illustration. In high school, she was a cheerleader, a member of the student council, and president of her drama club. She dropped out of high school during her senior year after failing her classes.

Burstyn worked as a dancer, and then a model until the age of 23. She later relocated to Dallas, where she continued modeling and worked in fashion jobs before moving to New York City.

From 1955 to 1956, Burstyn appeared as “away we go” dancing girl on The Jackie Gleason Show under the name Erica Dean. Burstyn then decided to become an actress and chose the name “Ellen McRae” as her professional name; she later changed her surname after her 1964 marriage to Neil Burstyn.

Burstyn debuted on Broadway in 1957 and joined Lee Strasberg’s The Actors Studio in New York City in 1967.

In 1975, she won a Tony Award for Best Performance in for her lead performance in the comedy Same Time, Next Year, a role in which she would reprise in a film adaptation in 1978.

Starting in the late 1950s, and throughout the 1960s, Burstyn frequently played guest roles on primetime TV shows, including Dr. Kildare, 77 Sunset Strip, Ben Casey, Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, Wagon Train, The Big Valley, and The Virginian and The Time Tunnel.

During 1964–1965, she had recurring role as Dr. Kate Bartok on NBC daytime television soap opera The Doctors.

Between 1967 and 1968, she co-starred as Julie Parsons opposite Dale Robertson in the ABC western The Iron Horse. She was credited as Ellen McRae until 1967, when she and her then-husband Neil Nephew both changed their surname to Burstyn, and she began to be credited as Ellen Burstyn.

Fletcher, Louise, One Flew, 1975

Father: deaf, Reverend, Missionary, founded churches

Career: TV

Estelle Louise Fletcher was born on July 22, 1934, in Birmingham, Alabama, the second of four children of Estelle (née Caldwell) and the Reverend Robert Capers Fletcher, an Episcopal missionary from Arab, Alabama.

Her parents were deaf and worked with the deaf/hard-of-hearing, but Fletcher and her siblings, Roberta, John, and Georgianna, were all of normal hearing, so the children were sent in turns to live with Estelle’s hearing sister in Texas for 3 months at a time to ensure they learned spoken English. Fletcher’s father founded more than 40 churches for the deaf in Alabama.

She received bachelor’s degree in drama from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1957.

Fletcher began appearing in several TV series including Lawman (1958) and Maverick (1959). (The Maverick episode “The Saga of Waco Williams” with James Garner was the series’s highest-rated episode.)

In 1959, she appeared in episode of the original Untouchables TV series starring Robert Stack, “Ma Barker and Her Boys,” as Elouise. Fletcher recalled having greater success Westerns due to her height: I was 5 feet 10 inches [1.78 m] tall, and no TV producer thought tall woman could be sexually attractive to anybody. I was able to get jobs on westerns because the actors were even taller than I was.

In 1960, Fletcher made two guest appearances on Perry Mason, as defendant Gladys Doyle in “The Case of the Mythical Monkeys”, and as Susan Connolly in “The Case of the Larcenous Lady”.

In summer of 1960, she was cast as Roberta McConnell in “The Bounty Hunter of Tate,” starring David McLean.

When conceiving of a way to play Nurse Ratched, she thought back to her childhood in Alabama, and the “paternalistic way that people treat other people there.” Moving to California had opened her eyes to how warped things had been back home. “White people actually felt that the life they were creating was good for black people,” she says—a dynamic she recognized in Nurse Ratched and her charges. “They’re in this ward, she’s looking out for them, and they have to act like they’re happy to get this medication or listen to this music. And make her feel good about the way she is.

In 1974, Fletcher returned to film in the crime drama Thieves Like Us, co-produced by her husband Jerry Bick and Robert Altman, who also directed.

The two had a falling out on Altman’s next project (Nashville (1975), Altman decided to cast Lily Tomlin for the role of Linnea Reese, initially created for and by Fletcher.

Meanwhile, director Miloš Forman saw Fletcher in Thieves and cast her as McMurphy’s nemesis Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). She based her performance on the paternalistic way she saw white people treat black people in her native Alabama. Fletcher gained recognition and fame for the role, winning the Best Actress Oscar, as well as a BAFTA Award. She was only the third actress ever to win an Academy Award and BAFTA Award for single performance, after Audrey Hepburn and Liza Minnelli. When Fletcher accepted her Oscar, she used sign language to thank her parents.

 

Dunaway, Faye, Network, 1976

Dunaway was born in Bascom, Florida, the daughter of Grace April (née Smith; 1922–2004), a housewife, and John MacDowell Dunaway Jr. (1920–1984), a career non-commissioner US Army.

She is of Ulster Scottish, English, and German descent. She spent her childhood traveling throughout the US and Europe.

Dunaway took dance classes, tap, piano and singing, graduated from Leon High School in Tallahassee, Florida.

She studied at Florida State University and University of Florida, and graduated from Boston University with a degree in theatre. She spent the summer before her senior year in a summer stock company at Harvard’s Loeb Drama Center, where one of her co-players was Jane Alexander, the actress and future head of the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 1962, at the age of 21, she took acting classes at the American National Theater and Academy.

Spotted by

She was spotted by Lloyd Richards while performing in a production of The Crucible, and was recommended to director Elia Kazan, in search of young talent for his Lincoln Center Repertory Company. She also studied acting at HB Studio in New York City.

Shortly after graduating from Boston University, Dunaway appeared on Broadway as replacement in Robert Bolt’s drama A Man for All Seasons.

Mentor: Harvard Professor William Alfred

She subsequently appeared in Arthur Miller’s After the Fall and the award-winning Hogan’s Goat by Harvard professor William Alfred, who became her mentor and spiritual advisor.

“With the exception of my mother, my brother, and my beloved son, Bill Alfred has been without question the most important single figure in my lifetime. A teacher, a mentor, and I suppose the father I never had, the parent and companion I would always have wanted, if that choice had been mine. He has taught me so much about the virtue of simple life, spirituality, the purity of real beauty, and how to go at this messy business of life.”

Dunaway’s first screen role was in the comedy crime film The Happening (1967), which starred Anthony Quinn. Her performance earned her good notices from critics.

That same year, she had supporting role in Otto Preminger’s Hurry Sundown, opposite Michael Caine and Jane Fonda. Filming proved difficult for Dunaway as she clashed with Preminger, who she felt didn’t know “anything at all about the process of acting.”

She later described this experience as a “psychodrama that left me feeling damaged at the end of each day.”

Dunaway had signed a six-picture deal with Preminger but decided to get her contract back. “As much as it cost me to get out of the deal with Otto, if I’d had to do those movies with him, then I wouldn’t have done Bonnie and Clyde, or The Thomas Crown Affair, or any of the movies I was suddenly in a position to choose to do. Beyond the movies I might have missed, it would have been a kind of Chinese water torture to have been stuck in five more terrible movies. It’s impossible to assess the damage that might have done to me that early on in my career.”

Field, Sally, Norma Rae 1979 (Oscar 1)

Sally Field was born on November 6, 1946, in Pasadena, California, to actress Margaret Field (née Morlan) (1922–2011) and pharmacist Richard Dryden Field (1914–1993), who served in the Army during World War II.

Her brother is Richard Dryden Field Jr., a physicist and academic. Her parents were divorced in 1950; on January 21, 1952, in Tijuana, Mexico, her mother married Jock Mahoney, an actor and stuntman.

Her ancestry includes English, Irish and on her father’s side Italian from the island of Sicily.

Field said in her 2018 memoir that she was sexually abused by Mahoney during her childhood.

As a teen, Field attended Portola Middle School and Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, where she was a cheerleader. Her 1964 classmates included financier Michael Milken and talent agent Michael Ovitz, while actress Cindy Williams was a year behind Field.

Field has stated that when she was 17 she had an illegal abortion in Mexico, and was molested during it.

Field began her career on TV, starring in the comedies Gidget (1965–1966), The Flying Nun (1967–1970), and The Girl with Something Extra (1973–1974). She received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for the NBC television film Sybil (1976).

Her film debut was as an extra in Moon Pilot (1962) followed by starring roles in The Way West (1967), Stay Hungry (1976), Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Heroes (1977), The End (1978), and Hooper (1978).

She won two Best Actress Oscars, for Norma Rae (1979), and for Places in the Heart (1984).

 

Spacek, Sissy, Coal Miner’s Daughter, 1980

Spacek was born on December 25, 1949, in Quitman, Texas, the daughter of Virginia Frances (née Spilman) and Edwin Arnold Spacek Sr., a county agricultural agent. Spacek’s father was of three quarters Czech (Moravian) and one quarter Sudeten-German ancestry; her paternal grandparents were Mary (née Cervenka) and Arnold A. Spacek (who served as mayor of Granger, Texas, in Williamson County).

Actor Rip Torn was a first cousin; his mother Thelma Torn (née Spacek) was an elder sister of Sissy’s father Edwin.

Spacek’s mother, who was of English and Irish descent, was from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

At age six, Spacek performed on stage for the first time in a local talent show. Although her birth name was Mary Elizabeth, she was always called Sissy by her brothers, which led to her stage name. She attended Quitman High School, and was named homecoming queen at her senior prom.

Spacek was greatly affected by the 1967 death of her close 18-year-old brother Robbie from leukemia, which she has called “the defining event of my whole life.” Spacek said the personal tragedy made her fearless in her acting career: “I think it made me brave. Once you experience something like that, you’ve experienced the ultimate tragedy. And if you can continue, nothing else frightens you. That’s what I meant about it being rocket fuel—I was fearless in a way. Maybe it gave more depth to my work because I had already experienced something profound and life-changing.”

Spacek initially aspired to a singing career. Under the name Rainbo, Spacek recorded a 1968 single, “John You Went Too Far This Time”, the lyrics of which chided John Lennon for his and Yoko Ono’s nude album cover for Two Virgins. When sales of her music sputtered, she was dropped by her record label. Spacek switched her focus to acting, enrolling at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. She worked as a photographic model (represented by Ford Models) and as an extra at Andy Warhol’s Factory. She appeared in a non-credited role in his film Trash (1970). With the help of actor Rip Torn, her cousin, she enrolled in Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio and later the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York. Her first credited role was in Prime Cut (1972), in which she played Poppy, a girl sold into sexual slavery.[5] The role led to television work, including a 1973 guest role on The Waltons, which she played twice. Spacek received international attention for her breakthrough role in Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973); she played Holly, the film’s narrator and 15-year-old girlfriend of serial killer Kit (Martin Sheen).[5] Spacek has described Badlands as the “most incredible” experience of her career.[10] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film a “cool, sometimes brilliant, always ferociously American film” and wrote, “Sheen and Miss Spacek are splendid as the self-absorbed, cruel, possibly psychotic children of our time.”

On the set of Badlands, Spacek met art director Jack Fisk, whom she married in 1974.

She worked as the set dresser for DePalma’s film Phantom of the Paradise (1974).

Spacek’s most prominent early role came in Brian De Palma’s film Carrie (1976), in which she played Carietta “Carrie” White, a shy, troubled high school senior with telekinetic powers.[5] Spacek had to work hard to persuade director de Palma to hire her for the role.[5] After rubbing Vaseline in her hair and donning an old sailor dress her mother made for her as a child, Spacek turned up at the audition with the odds against her, but won the part. Spacek’s performance was widely praised and led to Best Actress nomination.

 

Hepburn, Katharine, 1981, On Golden Pond (see 1933)

Streep, Meryl, 1982, Sophie’s Choice

Mary Louise Streep was born on June 22, 1949, in Summit, New Jersey. She is the daughter of artist Mary Wilkinson Streep and pharmaceutical executive Harry William Streep, Jr.

She has two younger brothers, Harry William Streep III and Dana David Streep, both actors.  Her father was of German and Swiss descent; his lineage traced back to Loffenau, from where Streep’s great-great-grandfather, Gottfried Streeb, immigrated to the United States and where one of her ancestors served as mayor (the surname was later changed to “Streep”).[10] Another line of her father’s family was from Giswil. Her mother had English, German, and Irish ancestry.[10] Some of Streep’s maternal ancestors lived in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and were descended from 17th-century English immigrants.[11][12] Her eighth great-grandfather, Lawrence Wilkinson, was one of the first Europeans to settle in Rhode Island.[13] Streep is also a second cousin seven times removed of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania; records show that her family is among the first purchasers of land in the state.[13] Her maternal great-great-grandparents, Manus McFadden and Grace Strain, were natives of the Horn Head district of Dunfanaghy in Ireland.[12][14][15]

Streep’s mother, whom she has compared in both appearance and manner to Dame Judi Dench, strongly encouraged her daughter and instilled confidence in her from a very young age. Streep said, “She was a mentor because she said to me, ‘Meryl, you’re capable. You’re so great.’ She was saying, ‘You can do whatever you put your mind to. If you’re lazy, you’re not going to get it done. But if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.’ And I believed her.”

Although she was naturally more introverted than her mother, when she later needed an injection of confidence in adulthood, she would at times consult her mother for advice.[17] Streep was raised as a Presbyterian[18] in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and attended Cedar Hill Elementary School and the Oak Street School, which was a junior high school at that time. In her junior high debut, she starred as Louise Heller in the play The Family Upstairs.

In 1963, the family moved to Bernardsville, New Jersey, where she attended Bernards High School.[20] Author Karina Longworth described her as a “gawky kid with glasses and frizzy hair”, yet noted that she liked to show off in front of the camera in family home movies from a young age.

At the age of 12, Streep was selected to sing at a school recital, leading to her having opera lessons from Estelle Liebling. Despite her talent, she later remarked, “I was singing something I didn’t feel and understand. That was an important lesson—not to do that. To find the thing that I could feel through.” She quit after four years. Streep had many Catholic school friends, and regularly attended Mass. She was a high school cheerleader for the Bernards High School Mountaineers and was also chosen as the homecoming queen her senior year. Her family lived on Old Fort Road.

Although Streep appeared in numerous school plays during her high school years, she was uninterested in serious theater until acting in the play Miss Julie at Vassar College in 1969, in which she gained attention across the campus. Vassar drama professor Clinton J. Atkinson noted, “I don’t think anyone ever taught Meryl acting. She really taught herself.” Streep demonstrated an early ability to mimic accents and to quickly memorize her lines. She received her BA cum laude in 1971, before applying for an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. At Yale, she supplemented her course fees by working as a waitress and typist, and appeared in over a dozen stage productions per year; at one point, she became overworked and developed ulcers, so she contemplated quitting acting and switching to study law.

Streep played a variety of roles on stage,[25] from Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to an 80-year-old woman in a wheelchair in a comedy written by then-unknown playwrights Christopher Durang and Albert Innaurato.  She was a student of choreographer Carmen de Lavallade, whom she introduced at the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors.[28] Another one of her teachers was Robert Lewis, one of the co-founders of the Actors Studio. Streep disapproved of some of the acting exercises she was asked to do, remarking that one professor taught the emotional recall technique by delving into personal lives in a way she found “obnoxious”.

She received her MFA from Yale in 1975. She also enrolled as a visiting student at Dartmouth College in 1970, and received an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree from the college in 1981.

One of Streep’s first professional jobs in 1975 was at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, during which she acted in five plays over six weeks. She moved to New York City in 1975, and was cast by Joseph Papp in a production of “Trelawny of the Wells” at the Public Theater, opposite Mandy Patinkin and John Lithgow.

She went on to appear in five more roles in her first year in New York, including in Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival productions of Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew with Raul Julia, and Measure for Measure opposite Sam Waterston and John Cazale.

She entered into a relationship with Cazale at this time, and resided with him until his death three years later.

She starred in the musical Happy End on Broadway, and won an Obie for her performance in the off-Broadway play Alice at the Palace.

Although Streep had not aspired to become a film actor, Robert De Niro’s performance in Taxi Driver (1976) had a profound impact on her; she said to herself, ‘That’s the kind of actor I want to be when I grow up.'[29] Streep began auditioning for film roles, and underwent an unsuccessful audition for the lead role in Dino De Laurentiis’s King Kong. Laurentiis, referring to Streep as she stood before him, said in Italian to his son: “This is so ugly. Why did you bring me this?”

Unknown to Laurentiis, Streep understood Italian, and she remarked, “I’m very sorry that I’m not as beautiful as I should be, but, you know – this is it. This is what you get.”

She continued to work on Broadway, appearing in the 1976 double bill of Tennessee Williams’ 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Arthur Miller’s A Memory of Two Mondays. She received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

Streep’s other Broadway credits include Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill musical Happy End, in which she had originally appeared off-Broadway at the Chelsea Theater Center. She received Drama Desk Award nominations for both productions.

Streep’s first feature film role came opposite Jane Fonda in the 1977 film Julia, in which she had a small role during a flashback sequence. Most of her scenes were edited out, but the brief time on screen horrified the actress: “I had a bad wig and they took the words from the scene I shot with Jane and put them in my mouth in a different scene. I thought, I’ve made a terrible mistake, no more movies. I hate this business.”

However, Streep cites Fonda as having a lasting influence on her as an actress, and has credited her as “opening probably more doors than I probably even know about.”

Robert De Niro, who had spotted Streep in her stage production of The Cherry Orchard, suggested that she play the role of his girlfriend in the war film The Deer Hunter (1978).[36] Cazale, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer, was also cast in the film, and Streep took on the role of a “vague, stock girlfriend” to remain with Cazale for the duration of filming.

Longworth notes that Streep: Made a case for female empowerment by playing a woman to whom empowerment was a foreign concept–a normal lady from an average American small town, for whom subservience was the only thing she knew.

Pauline Kael, who would later become a strong critic of Streep, remarked that she was a “real beauty” who brought much freshness to the film with her performance. The film’s success exposed Streep to a wider audience and earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.[43]

In the 1978 miniseries Holocaust, Streep played the leading role of a German woman married to a Jewish artist played by James Woods in Nazi era Germany. She found the material to be “unrelentingly noble” and professed to have taken on the role for financial gain.  Streep travelled to Germany and Austria for filming while Cazale remained in New York. Upon her return, Streep found that Cazale’s illness had progressed, and she nursed him until his death on March 12, 1978.

With an estimated audience of 109 million, Holocaust brought a wider degree of public recognition to Streep, who found herself “on the verge of national visibility”. She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her performance.  Despite the awards success, Streep was still not enthusiastic towards her film career and preferred acting on stage.

MacLaine, Shirley, 1983, Terms Endearment

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 3. 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 played the boys’ roles due to being the tallest 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 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.

The summer before 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). She became an understudy to actress Carol Haney in The Pajama Game; in May 1954 Haney injured her ankle during a matinee, and MacLaine replaced her. 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 Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry (1955), for which she won the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year. This was 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 leading role in Some Came Running (both 1958), for which she gained her first Oscar nomination and Golden Globe nomination.

Field, Sally, Places in Heart, 1984 (See 1979)

 

Page, Geraldine, Trip Bountiful, 1985

At age 5, Page relocated with her family to Chicago, Illinois. Raised a Methodist, Page and her family were active parishioners of the Englewood Methodist Church in Chicago, where she had her first foray into acting within the church’s theatre group, playing Jo March in a 1941 production of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

After graduating from Chicago’s Englewood Technical Prep Academy, she attended the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago (now at DePaul University), with the intention of becoming a visual artist or pianist.  After graduating from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1945, Page studied acting at the Herbert Berghof School and the American Theatre Wing in New York City, studying with Uta Hagen for seven years, and then at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg.

During this time, Page would return to Chicago in the summers to perform in repertory theatre in Lake Zurich, Illinois, where she and fellow actors had established their own theater company.

While attempting to establish her career, she worked various odd jobs, as a hat-check girl, theater usher, lingerie model, and factory laborer.

Matlin, Marlee, Children Lost God, 1986

Marlee Matlin (born August 24, 1965) is an American actress, recipient of numerous awards, including an Academy Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for a BAFTA Award, and 4 Primetime Emmy Awards.

Deaf since she was 18 months old, Matlin made her acting debut playing Sarah Norman in the romantic drama film Children of a Lesser God (1986), winning the Best Actress Oscar.

She is the first deaf performer to win an Oscar Award, as well as the youngest winner in the Best Actress category.

Matlin starred in the police drama series Reasonable Doubts (1991–1993), which earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations, and her guest roles in Seinfeld (1993), Picket Fences (1993), The Practice (2000), and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2004–05) earned her four Primetime Emmy Award nominations. For her role in CODA (2021), she won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

Matlin is a prominent member of the National Association of the Deaf, and her interpreter is Jack Jason.

In 2009, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Matlin was born in Morton Grove, Illinois, on August 24, 1965, to Libby (née Hammer; 1930–2020) and Donald Matlin (1930–2013), who was an automobile dealer.

Matlin lost all hearing in her right ear and 80% of the hearing in her left ear at the age of 18 months due to illness and fevers. In her autobiography I’ll Scream Later, she suggests that her hearing loss may have been due to a genetically malformed cochlea.

She is the only member of her family who is deaf. She has a sense of humor about her deafness: “Often I’m talking to people through my speakerphone, and after 10 minutes or so they say, ‘Wait a minute, Marlee, how can you hear me?’ They forget I have an interpreter there who is signing to me as they talk. So I say, ‘You know what? I can hear on Wednesdays.'”

Matlin and her two older brothers, Eric and Marc, grew up in a Reform Jewish household. Her family roots are in Poland and Russia. Matlin attended a synagogue for the Deaf (Congregation Bene Shalom), and after studying Hebrew phonetically, was able to learn her Torah portion for her Bat Mitzvah. She was later interviewed for the book Mazel Tov: Celebrities’ Bar and Bat Mitzvah Memories.

She graduated from John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights and attended Harper College in Palatine, Illinois. She had planned career in criminal justice.

In her autobiography, Matlin described two instances in which she was molested, by a babysitter at age 11, and by teacher in high school.

Matlin made her stage debut at the age of 7, as Dorothy in an International Center on Deafness and the Arts (ICODA) children’s theatre production of The Wizard of Oz,[19] and continued to appear with the ICODA children’s theatre group throughout her childhood.

At the age of 13, she won second prize in the Chicago Center’s Annual International Creative Arts Festival for an essay titled, “If I Was not a Movie Star.”

She was discovered by Henry Winkler during one of her ICODA theater performances, which ultimately led to film debut in Children of a Lesser God (1986).

The film received positive reviews and Matlin’s performance as Sarah Norman, a reluctant-to-speak deaf woman who falls for a hearing man, drew high praise.

Schickel: “Matlin has an unusual talent for concentrating her emotions — and an audience’s — in her signing. But there is something more here, an ironic intelligence, a fierce but not distancing wit, that the movies, with their famous ability to photograph thought, discover in very few performances.”

Ebert: “She holds her own against the powerhouse she’s acting with, carrying scenes with passion and almost painful fear of being rejected and hurt, which is really what her rebellion is about.”

Cher, Moonlight, 1987

Father: Armenian, truck driver

Mother: Irish, waitress, model-actress; multiple marriage

Cheryl Sarkisian[a] was born in El Centro, California, on May 20, 1946.

Her father, John Sarkisian, an Armenian-American truck driver with drug and gambling problems, was rarely present during her early life. Her mother, Georgia Holt, was a model and actress of Irish, English, German and Cherokee descent. Cher’s paternal grandparents were survivors of the Armenian genocide.

Cher’s parents divorced when she was 10 months old. Before leaving, her father placed her in orphanage for several months; Holt was allowed to visit once a week, only able to see Cher through a window. Both found the experience traumatic.

In 1951, Holt married actor John Southall, with whom she had Cher’s half-sister, Georganne. Holt’s marriage to Southall ended when Cher was 9; Cher saw him as “real father” and a “good-natured man who turned belligerent when he drank too much”. Holt remarried and divorced several times, moving the family across states, including New York, Texas and California. They often struggled financially, and Cher used rubber bands to hold her shoes together.

While living in Los Angeles, Holt pursued acting while working as waitress, securing minor TV roles for her daughters in shows “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.”

By fifth grade, Cher organized class performance of the musical Oklahoma!, taking on male roles when boys refused to participate.

At 9, her voice was unusually low for a female child. Fascinated by film stars, Cher idolized Audrey Hepburn, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), emulating Hepburn’s unconventional outfits and demeanor.

She also admired Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn, but felt discouraged by lack of dark-haired actresses in Hollywood. She recalled, “In the Disney cartoons, all the witches and evil queens were really dark. There was nobody I could look at and think, ‘That’s who I’m like.'”

As a child, she dreamed of fame but struggled with inadequacy, saw herself as “unattractive” and “untalented”. Reflecting on her ambitions, “I couldn’t think of anything that I could do … I just thought, ‘I’ll be famous‘. That was my goal.”

In 1961, Holt married bank manager Gilbert LaPiere, who adopted Cher (under the name Cheryl LaPiere) and Georganne and enrolled them at Montclair College Preparatory School, a private school in Encino.

Coming from modest background, Cher faced challenges in upper-class environment, where, as biographer Connie Berman wrote, her “striking appearance” and “outgoing personality” set her apart.

A former classmate, “I’ll never forget seeing Cher for the first time. She was so special … like a movie star, right then and there … She said she was going to be a movie star and we knew she would.”

Known for creativity and wit, Cher excelled in French and English but struggled with other subjects,–she has dyslexia. Unconventional behavior stood out: she performed songs for students during lunch and surprised peers wearing midriff-baring top. Reflecting on lack of focus in school, “I was never really [there]. I was always thinking about when I was grown up and famous.”

At 16, Cher left school and moved out of mother’s house to live with a friend.

She took acting classes and supported herself by dancing in nightclubs in Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, introduced herself to performers, managers and agents. According to Berman, “[Cher] did not hesitate to approach anyone she thought could help her get a break”.

Cher met performer Sonny Bono, 11 years her senior, in November 1962 when he worked for record producer Phil Spector. Cher’s friend moved out and Cher accepted Sonny’s offer to be his housekeeper. Sonny introduced Cher to Spector, who used her as backup singer on recordings, the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” and the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”. Spector produced first single, “Ringo, I Love You”, which Cher recorded under the name Bonnie Jo Mason. Radio programmers rejected the song, mistaking Cher’s deep contralto for man’s voice, assuming it was male homosexual singing love song to Beatles drummer Ringo Starr.

An ad features a black-and-white portrait of Cher with long straight hair and bangs, wearing a dark outfit. The text promotes her “phenomenal talent” and upcoming TV appearances.

Foster, Jodie, 1988, 1991

(See 1988)

Tandy, Jessica, Driving Miss Daisy, 1989

Occup: No

Father, travelling salesman for rope manufacturer.

Mother, head of a school for mentally handicapped children

The youngest of three siblings, Tandy was born in Geldeston Road in Hackney, London to Harry Tandy and Jessie Helen Horspool. Her mother was from a large fenland family in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, and head of a school for mentally handicapped children, and her father was a travelling salesman for a rope manufacturer.

She was educated at Dame Alice Owen’s School in Islington.

Her father died when she was 12, and her mother taught evening courses to earn income.

Her brother Edward was later a prisoner of war of the Japanese in the Far East.

Tandy began her career at the age of 18 in London, establishing herself opposite such actors as Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud.

She entered films in Britain, but after her marriage to Jack Hawkins failed, she moved to the United States hoping to find better roles.

During her time as leading actress on stage in London she fought for roles over her rivals, Peggy Ashcroft and Celia Johnson.

In 1942, she married Hume Cronyn and went on to play supporting roles in Hollywood films.

Tandy became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1952.

Tandy also worked in radio. Among other programs, she was a regular on Mandrake the Magician (as Princess Nada), and then with husband Hume Cronyn in The Marriage, which ran on radio from 1953–54, and then segued onto TV.

She made her American film debut in The Seventh Cross (1944).

The Hollywood studio system did not know what to do with Tandy. Failing to gain leading roles, she was relegated to supporting appearances in The Valley of Decision (1945), The Green Years (1946, as Cronyn’s daughter), Dragonwyck (1946) starring Gene Tierney and Vincent Price and Forever Amber (1947).[]

She had flashy role as the insomniac murderess in the 1948 film-noir adapted by Aldous Huxley from his short story “The Gioconda Smile”.

Over the next three decades, her film career continued sporadically while she found better roles on the stage. Her roles included The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951) opposite James Mason, The Light in the Forest (1958), and a role as a domineering mother in Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963).

On Broadway, she won a Tony Award for her performance as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948.

After this (she lost the film role to Vivien Leigh), she concentrated on the stage. In 1976, she and Cronyn joined the acting company of the Stratford Festival, and returned in 1980 to debut Cronyn’s play Foxfire.

In 1977, she earned her second Tony Award, for her performance (with Cronyn) in The Gin Game and her third Tony in 1982 for her performance, again with Cronyn, in Foxfire.

 

Bates, Kathy, Misery, 1990

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, June 28, 1948, Bates studied theater at Southern Methodist University before moving to New York City to pursue an acting career.

She landed minor stage roles before being cast in her first on-screen role in Taking Off (1971).

Her first Off-Broadway stage role was in the play Vanities (1976). She garnered a nomination for the Tony Award Best Lead Actress in a Play for the Marsha Norman play ‘night, Mother (1983), and won an Obie Award for her role in Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (1988).

Oscars: Best Actress Award, and 3 Supporting Noms

Bates won the Best Actress Oscar for portraying Annie Wilkes in the psychological thriller Misery (1990).

She was also nominated in Best Supporting Actress for her performances as a tough political operative in Primary Colors (1998), a free spirited neighbor in About Schmidt (2002), and the mother of a bombing suspect in Richard Jewell (2019).

Bates’ other notable roles were in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Dolores Claiborne (1995), Titanic (1997), The Waterboy (1998), Revolutionary Road (2008), The Blind Side (2009), Midnight in Paris (2011), and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (2023).

On TV, Bates received Emmy Awards for her performances in Two and a Half Men (2012) and for her portrayal of Delphine LaLaurie in American Horror Story: Coven (2013).

She was also Emmy-nominated for The Late Shift (1996), Annie (1999), Six Feet Under (2003), Warm Springs (2005), Harry’s Law (2011–2012), American Horror Story: Freak Show (2014), and American Horror Story: Hotel (2015). Since 2024, she portrays the titular lead in the CBS series Matlock.

Outside of acting, Bates is also known for advocacy. After undergoing double mastectomy and developing lymphedema, Bates became spokesperson for the Lymphatic Education & Research Network (LE&RN).

Bates was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the youngest of 3 daughters of mechanical engineer Langdon Doyle Bates of Tennessee and homemaker Bertye Kathleen (née Talbert) of McCormick County, South Carolina.

Her paternal grandfather Finis L. Bates was a lawyer and author. Her great-great-grandfather, an Irish immigrant to New Orleans, Louisiana, served as President Andrew Jackson’s doctor.[3] She graduated early from White Station High School (1965) and from Southern Methodist University (1969), where she studied theater and became a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority.[4] She moved to New York City in 1970 to pursue an acting career.[5] Bates is an alumna of the William Esper Studio for the performing arts in Manhattan, New York City.[6]

Early work and success on stage (1970–1989)

After moving to New York City, Bates worked several odd jobs as well as minor stage roles while struggling to find work as an actress. At one point, she worked as a cashier at the Museum of Modern Art.

In 1970, Bates was cast in a minor role in Miloš Forman comedy Taking Off (credited as “Bobo Bates”), her first on-screen role in a feature film

Not sufficiently attractive

After this, she continued to struggle to find acting roles, later claiming in The New York Times that more than one casting agent told her that she wasn’t sufficiently attractive to be a successful actress:

I’m not a stunning woman. I never was an ingenue; I’ve always just been a character actor. When I was younger it was a real problem, because I was never pretty enough for the roles that other young women were being cast in. The roles I was lucky enough to get were real stretches for me: usually a character who was older, or a little weird, or whatever. And it was hard, not just for the lack of work but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you. And you think, “Well, y’know, I’m a real person.”

After Taking Off was released, Bates did not work on another feature until she appeared opposite Dustin Hoffman in Straight Time (1978) though she continued to perform on stage throughout the 1970s.

In 1973 she performed in Wayside Theatre’s traveling group, Wayside Theatre on Tour, and was credited as “Bobo Bates”.[10][11] Her first Off-Broadway performance was in the 1976 production of Vanities. Bates subsequently originated the role of Lenny in the first production of Crimes of the Heart at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in 1979.[9] Beginning in 1980, she appeared in Lanford Wilson’s Fifth of July. In 1982, she starred in the Robert Altman-directed Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean with Karen Black and Cher. During this time, she also began working in television, making appearances in episodes of prime-time series such as The Love Boat, Cagney & Lacey, and St. Elsewhere in the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, as well as several soap operas, including The Doctors, All My Children, and One Life to Live.[12]

The New York Times wrote that, Bates “established herself as one of America’s finest stage actresses”.

In 1983, she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play ‘night, Mother. The stage production ran for more than a year. She found further success on Off Broadway, in Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, for which she won an Obie Award for Best Actress in 1988. McNally specifically wrote the play for Bates.

 

Foster, Jodie, Silence of Lambs, 1991

(See 1988)

 

Thompson, Emma, Howards End 1992

Emma Thompson was born in Paddington, London, on 15 April 1959.[6] Her mother is the Scottish actress Phyllida Law, while her English father, Eric Thompson, was involved in theatre, and was the writer–narrator of the popular children’s television series The Magic Roundabout.[7][8] Her godfather was the director and writer Ronald Eyre.[9][10] She has one sister, Sophie Thompson, who also works as an actress.[7] The family lived in West Hampstead in north London,[8] and Thompson was educated at Camden School for Girls.[11] She spent much time in Scotland during her childhood and often visited Ardentinny, where her grandparents and uncle lived.

In her youth, Thompson was intrigued by language and literature, a trait which she attributes to her father, who shared her love of words.[13] After successfully taking A levels in English, French and Latin,[14] and securing a scholarship,[15] she began studying for an English degree at Newnham College, Cambridge,[16] arriving in 1977. Thompson believes that it was inevitable that she would become an actress, commenting that she was “surrounded by creative people and I don’t think it would ever have gone any other way, really”.[17] While there, she had a “seminal moment” that turned her to feminism and inspired her to take up performing. She explained in an interview in 2007 how she discovered the book The Madwoman in the Attic, “which is about Victorian female writers and the disguises they took on in order to express what they wanted to express. That completely changed my life.”[18] She became a self-professed “punk rocker”,[19] with short red hair and a motorbike, and aspired to be a comedian like Lily Tomlin.[18]

At Cambridge, Thompson was invited into Footlights, the university’s prestigious sketch comedy troupe, by its president, Martin Bergman,[20] becoming its first female member.[21] Also in the troupe were fellow actors Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, and she had a romantic relationship with the latter.[22] Fry recalled that “there was no doubt that Emma was going the distance. Our nickname for her was Emma Talented.”[23] In 1980, Thompson served as the Vice President of Footlights,[24] and co-directed the troupe’s first all-female revue, Woman’s Hour.[20] The following year, Thompson and her Footlights team won the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for their sketch show The Cellar Tapes.[25] Thompson graduated with upper second-class honours.[26]

In 1982, Thompson’s father died at the age of 52.[7] The actress has commented that this “tore [the family] to pieces”,[27] and “I can’t begin to tell you how much I regret his not being around”.[28] She added, “At the same time, it’s possible that were he still alive I might never have had the space or courage to do what I’ve done … I have a definite feeling of inheriting space. And power.”

Thompson had her first professional role in 1982, touring in a stage version of Not the Nine O’Clock News.[6] She then turned to television, where much of her early work came with her Footlights co-stars Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. The regional ITV comedy series There’s Nothing To Worry About! (1982) was their first outing, followed by the one-off BBC show The Crystal Cube (1983).

There’s Nothing to Worry About! later returned as the networked sketch show Alfresco (1983–84), which ran for two series with Thompson, Fry, Laurie, Ben Elton, and Robbie Coltrane.[6][29] She later collaborated again with Fry and Laurie on the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 series Saturday Night Fry (1988).

In 1985, Thompson was cast in the West End revival of the musical Me and My Girl, co-starring Robert Lindsay. It provided a breakthrough in her career, as the production earned rave reviews.[6][30] She played the role of Sally Smith for 15 months, which exhausted the actress; she later remarked “I thought if I did the fucking “Lambeth Walk” one more time I was going to fucking throw up.”[23] At the end of 1985, she wrote and starred in her own one-off special for Channel 4, Emma Thompson: Up for Grabs.

Thompson achieved another breakthrough in 1987,[6] when she had leading roles in two television miniseries: Fortunes of War, a World War II drama co-starring Kenneth Branagh, and Tutti Frutti, a dark-comedy about a Scottish rock band with Robbie Coltrane.[30] For these performances, Thompson won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress.[32] The following year, she wrote and starred in her own sketch comedy series for BBC, Thompson, but this was poorly received.[33] In 1989, she and Branagh—who had formed a romantic relationship—starred in a stage revival of Look Back in Anger, directed by Judi Dench and produced by Branagh’s Renaissance Theatre Company.[30][34] Later that year, the pair starred in a televised version of the play.[6][34]

Thompson’s first film appearance came in the romantic comedy The Tall Guy (1989), the feature debut from screenwriter Richard Curtis. It starred Jeff Goldblum as a West End actor, and Thompson played the nurse with whom he falls in love. The film was not widely seen,[35] but Thompson’s performance was praised in The New York Times, where Caryn James called her “an exceptionally versatile comic actress”.[36] She next turned to Shakespeare, appearing as Princess Katherine in Branagh’s screen adaptation of Henry V (1989). The film was released to great critical acclaim.[3

Thompson and Branagh are considered by American writer and critic James Monaco to have led the “British cinematic onslaught” in the 1990s.

She continued to experiment with Shakespeare, appearing with Branagh in his stage productions of A Midsummer Night Dream.

Thompson returned to cinema in 1991, playing a “frivolous aristocrat” in Impromptu with Judy Davis and Hugh Grant. and Thompson was nominated for Best Supporting Female at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Her second release of 1991 was another pairing with Branagh, who also directed, in the Los Angeles-based noir Dead Again. She played a woman who has forgotten her identity.

Early in 1992, Thompson had a guest role in an episode of Cheers as Frasier Crane’s first wife.

Hunter, Holy, The Piano, 1993

Holly Patricia Hunter (born March 20, 1958) is an American actress, who for her performance as Ada McGrath in the 1993 The Piano, won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Cannes Film Fest for Best Actress.

She was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for Broadcast News (1987), and for Best Supporting Actress in The Firm (1993) and  Thirteen (2003).

A seven-time Primetime Emmy Award nominee, Hunter won for Roe vs. Wade (1989), and The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (1993). She also starred in the TNT drama series Saving Grace (2007–10). Her other film roles include Raising Arizona (1987), Always (1989), Home for the Holidays (1995), Crash (1996), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Incredibles (2004), its sequel Incredibles 2 (2018), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and The Big Sick (2017), which earned her a SAG Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.

Hunter was born in Conyers, Georgia, the daughter of Opal Marguerite (née Catledge), a housewife, and Charles Edwin Hunter, farmer and sporting-goods manufacturer’s representative.

Hunter began acting at Rockdale County High School in the early 1970s, performing in “Oklahoma,” “Man of La Mancha” and “Fiddler on the Roof.” Hunter earned a degree in drama from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and for a while performed in the theatre scene there, playing ingenue roles at City Theatre, then named the City Players.

She eventually moved to New York City and roomed with fellow actress Frances McDormand.

Hunter, in 2008, described living in the Bronx “at the end of the D subway train, just off 205th Street, on Bainbridge Avenue and Hull Avenue. It was very Irish, and then you could go just a few blocks away and hit major Italian.”

Chance Encounter

Chance encounter with playwright Beth Henley, when the two were trapped alone in elevator, led to Hunter’s being cast in Henley’s plays Crimes of the Heart (succeeding Mary Beth Hurt on Broadway), and Off-Broadway’s The Miss Firecracker Contest.

“It was like the beginning of 1982. It was on 49th Street between Broadway and Eighth [Avenue] … on the south side of the street,” Hunter recalled. “We were trapped 10 minutes; not long. We actually had nice conversation. It was just the two of us.”

Hunter made her film debut in the 1981 slasher movie The Burning. After moving to Los Angeles in 1982, Hunter appeared in TV movies before being cast in a supporting role in 1984’s Swing Shift.

That year, she had her first collaboration with the writing-directing-producing team of brothers Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, in Blood Simple, making an uncredited appearance as a voice on answering-machine recording.

More film and television work followed until 1987, when she earned a starring role in the Coens’ Raising Arizona and was nominated for an Oscar Award for her performance in Broadcast News, after which Hunter became a critically acclaimed star.

She went on to the screen adaptation of Henley’s Miss Firecracker; Spielberg’s Always, a romantic drama with Richard Dreyfuss; and the made-for-TV 1989 docudrama about the Supreme Court case “Roe v. Wade.”

After her second collaboration with Dreyfuss, in Once Around, Hunter garnered critical attention for her work in two 1993 films, resulting in her being nominated for two Oscar Awards the same year: Hunter’s performance in The Firm won her Best Supporting Actress nom, while her portrayal of a mute Scottish woman entangled in an adulterous affair with Harvey Keitel in Jane Campion’s The Piano won her the Best Actress award.

Hunter went on to star in the comedy-drama Home for the Holidays and the thriller Copycat, both in 1995. She also appeared in David Cronenberg’s Crash and as a sardonic angel in A Life Less Ordinary. She played a recently divorced New Yorker in Richard LaGravenese’s Living Out Loud; starring alongside Danny DeVito, Queen Latifah, and Martin Donovan. Hunter rounded out the 1990s with a minor role in the independent drama Jesus’ Son and as a housekeeper torn between a grieving widower and his son in Kiefer Sutherland’s drama Woman Wanted.

Following a supporting role in the Coens’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Hunter took top billing in the same year’s television movie Harlan County War, an account of labor struggles among Kentucky coal-mine workers. Hunter continued her small screen streak with a role in When Billie Beat Bobby, playing tennis pro Billie Jean King in the fact-based story of King’s famed exhibition match with Bobby Riggs; and as narrator of Eco Challenge New Zealand before returning to film work with a minor role in the 2002 drama Moonlight Mile.

The following year found Hunter in the redemption drama Levity. Also in 2003, Hunter had the role of a mother named Melanie Freeland, whose daughter is troubled and going through the perils of being a teenager in the film Thirteen. The film was critically acclaimed along with Hunter and her co-stars and earned her nominations for the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.

 

Lange, Jessica, Blue Sky, 1994

Lange was born in Cloquet, Minnesota, on April 20, 1949. Her father, Albert John Lange (1913–1989), was a teacher and traveling salesman, and her mother, Dorothy Florence (née Sahlman; 1913–1998), was a housewife.

She has two older sisters, Jane and Ann, and a younger brother, George. Her paternal ancestry is German and Dutch, her maternal ancestry Finnish. Due to the nature of her father’s professions, her family moved over a dozen times to various towns and cities in Minnesota before settling down in her hometown, where she graduated from Cloquet High School.

In 1967, she received a scholarship to study art and photography at the University of Minnesota, where she met and began dating Spanish photographer Paco Grande.

After the two married in 1971, Lange left college to pursue  more bohemian lifestyle, traveling in the US and Mexico in a minivan with Grande. The couple then moved to Paris, where they drifted apart. While in Paris, Lange studied mime theatre under the supervision of Étienne Decroux and joined the Opéra-Comique as dancer. She later studied acting at HB Studio in New York City.

Discovered

While sharing an apartment with Jerry Hall and Grace Jones, Lange was discovered by fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez and became a model for the Wilhelmina modelling agency.

In 1973, she returned to the U.S. and began work in NYC as  waitress at the Lion’s Head Tavern in Greenwich Village.

While modeling, Lange was discovered by Hollywood producer Dino De Laurentiis, who was looking to cast an ingenue for his remake of King Kong. Lange made her film debut in the 1976 King Kong, beating Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn for the role of damsel-in-distress.

Despite the film’s success—it was the fifth-highest-grossing film of 1976 and received an Oscar for Best Visual Effects—it and Lange’s performance were widely panned. But film critic Pauline Kael wrote, “The movie is sparked by Jessica Lange’s fast yet dreamy comic style. She has the high, wide forehead and clear-eyed transparency of Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey, and one liners so dumb that the audience laughs and moans at the same time, yet they’re in character, and when Lange says them she holds the eye and you like her, the way people liked Lombard.”

Lange remained a favorite of Kael, who wrote, “She has a facial structure that the camera yearns for, and she has talent, too.”

Bob Fosse, whom Lange had befriended and with whom she had carried on a casual romantic affair, cast Lange as the Angel of Death, a part he had written for her in his semi-autobiographical film All That Jazz (1979).

She was also considered for the role of Wendy Torrance in The Shining before it went to Shelley Duvall.

Lange began the new decade in the light romp How to Beat the High Cost of Living (1980), co-starring Jane Curtin and Susan Saint James, The film received mostly negative reviews and quickly disappeared from theaters.

A year later, director Bob Rafelson contacted her about a project he was working on with Jack Nicholson, who had recently auditioned Lange for Goin’ South (1978).

 

Sarandon, Susan, Dead Man Walking, 1995

In 1969, Sarandon went to a casting call for the picture Joe (1970) with her then-husband Chris Sarandon. Although he did not get a part, she was cast in a major role of a disaffected teen who disappears into the seedy underworld.

Between 1970 and 1972, she appeared in the soap operas A World Apart and Search for Tomorrow, playing Patrice Kahlman and Sarah Fairbanks, respectively. She appeared in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and played the female lead in The Great Waldo Pepper (also 1975), opposite Robert Redford. She was twice directed by Louis Malle, in Pretty Baby (1978) and Atlantic City (1981), for which she earned her first Oscar Award nomination

McDormand, Francis, 1996, 2017, 2020

McDormand was born Cynthia Ann Smith on June 23, 1957, in Gibson City, Illinois. She was adopted at one and a half years of age by Noreen (Nickelson) and Vernon McDormand and renamed Frances Louise McDormand. Her adoptive mother was a nurse and receptionist while her adoptive father was a Disciples of Christ pastor; both were originally from Canada. Her biological mother—whom she has proudly described, along with herself, as “white trash”—may have been one of the parishioners at Vernon’s church. She has a sister, Dorothy A. “Dot” McDormand, an ordained Disciples of Christ minister and chaplain, as well as a brother, Kenneth, both of whom were adopted by the McDormands, who had no biological children.

McDormand’s father specialized in restoring congregations, so he frequently moved their family, and they lived in small towns in Illinois, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, before settling in Monessen, Pennsylvania, where McDormand graduated from Monessen High School in 1975. She attended Bethany College in West Virginia, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in theater in 1979. In 1982, she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale School of Drama. She was roommate of actress Holly Hunter while living in New York City.

McDormand’s first professional acting role was in Derek Walcott’s play In a Fine Castle also known as The Last Carnival, funded by the MacArthur Foundation and performed in Trinidad.

In 1984, she made her film debut in Blood Simple, the first film by her husband Joel Coen and brother-in-law Ethan Coen. In 1985, McDormand appeared in Sam Raimi’s Crimewave, as well as an episode of Hunter. In 1987, she appeared as eccentric friend Dot in Raising Arizona, starring Holly Hunter and Nicolas Cage.

McDormand played Connie Chapman in the fifth season of the TV police drama Hill Street Blues, and appeared in a 1986 episode of The Twilight Zone. In 1988, she played Stella Kowalski in a production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress. McDormand is an associate member of the experimental theater company The Wooster Group. In 2002, “the game and talented” McDormand performed as Oenone in the Wooster Group’s production of an “exhilarating dissection” of Racine’s tragedy Phèdre entitled To You, the Birdie!, at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York.

After appearing in several theatrical and television roles during the 1980s, McDormand gradually gained renown and critical acclaim for her dramatic work in film. In 1989, she was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress for Mississippi Burning (1988). Cast alongside Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, McDormand was singled out for praise.

McDormand has frequently collaborated with the Coen brothers, including Fargo, for which she won her first Best Actress.In 1990, McDormand teamed again with director Sam Raimi for Darkman, in which she co-starred alongside Liam Neeson. The film was a critical and commercial success

That same year, she appeared in the Coen brothers’ Miller’s Crossing and starred in the political thriller Hidden Agenda alongside Brian Cox, which was met with further critical acclaim, and won Jury Prize at the 1990 Cannes Film Fest. The following year, McDormand appeared alongside Demi Moore and Jeff Daniels in the romantic comedy The Butcher’s Wife.

In 1992, she co-starred in the TV film Crazy in Love with Holly Hunter and Gena Rowlands. In 1993, McDormand co-starred in Robert Altman’s ensemble film Short Cuts, based on stories by Raymond Carver. The film was critically acclaimed, with the cast receiving special Volpi Cup for Best Ensemble at the 50th Venice Film Festival.

 

Hunt, Helen, As Good, 1997

Hunt appeared as a marijuana-smoking classmate on an episode of The Facts of Life. In 1982, Hunt played a young woman who, while on PCP, jumps out of a second-story window, in a made-for-TV film called Desperate Lives (a scene which she mocked during a Saturday Night Live monologue in 1994), and she was cast on the ABC sitcom It Takes Two, which lasted only one season. In 1983, she starred in Bill: On His Own, with Mickey Rooney and played Tami Maida in the fact-based production Quarterback Princess; both were made-for television films. She also had a recurring role on St. Elsewhere as Colleen Williams, the girlfriend of Jack “Boomer” Morrison, and had a notable guest appearance as a cancer-stricken mother-to-be in a two-part episode of Highway to Heaven.

By the late 1980s, Hunt had begun appearing in studio films for teenage audience. Her first major film role was that of a punk rock girl in the sci-fi film Trancers (1984). She played the friend of an army brat in the comedy Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), with Sarah Jessica Parker and Shannen Doherty, and appeared as the daughter of a woman on the verge of divorce in Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), alongside Kathleen Turner. In 1987, Hunt starred with Matthew Broderick in Project X, as a graduate student assigned to care for chimpanzees used in a secret Air Force project. In 1988, she appeared in Stealing Home, as Hope Wyatt, the sister of Billy Wyatt, played by Mark Harmon and a cast featuring Jodie Foster and Harold Ramis. Next of Kin (1989) featured her as the pregnant wife of a respectable lawman, opposite Patrick Swayze and Liam Neeson.

Swank, Hilary, Boys Don’t Cry, 1999, 2004

Hilary Ann Swank was born on July 30, 1974, in Lincoln, Nebraska, to Judy Kay (née Clough) and Stephen Swank. Many of Swank’s family members are from Ringgold County, Iowa. Her maternal grandmother, Frances Martha Clough (née Domínguez), was born in El Centro, California, and was of Mexican descent. Swank’s paternal grandmother was born in England; her other ancestry includes Dutch, German, Ulster-Scots, Scottish, Swiss, and Welsh. The surname “Swank”, originally “Schwenk,” is of German origin.

At age six, after living in Spokane, Washington, Swank’s family moved into a home near Lake Samish, near Bellingham, Washington. She attended Happy Valley Elementary School, Fairhaven Middle School, and Sehome High School in Bellingham until she was 16.

She competed in the Junior Olympics, the Washington state championships in swimming, and ranked fifth in all-around gymnastics.

Swank made her first appearance on stage when she was nine, starring in The Jungle Book.

Living in a Car

When Swank was 15, her parents separated, and her mother, supportive of  daughter’s desire to act, moved with her to Los Angeles.  They lived in their car until her mother saved enough money to rent an apartment. Swank has called her mother the inspiration for her acting career and her life.

In California, Swank enrolled in South Pasadena High School, later dropping out. She described that time: “I felt like such an outsider. I didn’t feel like I fit in. I didn’t belong in any way. I didn’t even feel like the teachers wanted me there. I just felt like I wasn’t seen or understood.”

She became an actor because she felt like an outsider: “As a kid, I felt that I belonged only when I read a book or saw a movie, and could get involved with a character. It was natural that I became an actor because I longed so much to be those other people, or at least to play them.”

Swank made her film debut in the 1992 comedy horror film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, playing a supporting role, after which she acted in direct-to-video drama Quiet Days in Hollywood, where she co-starred with Chad Lowe, to whom she was married from 1997 to 2007.

Her first lead film role was in the fourth installment of the Karate Kid series, The Next Karate Kid (1994) as Julie Pierce.

The role used her gymnastics background and paired her with Pat Morita. In 1994, she also starred in the drama, Cries Unheard: The Donna Yaklich Story, as the abused stepdaughter who was protected by Donna (Jaclyn Smith). In 1995, she appeared with British actor Bruce Payne in Kounterfeit. In 1996, she starred in a TV movie, family drama Terror in the Family, as a troubled teenager. In September 1997, Swank played single mother Carly Reynolds in Beverly Hills, 90210 and was initially promised it would be a two-year role, but saw her character written out after 16 episodes in January 1998.[3] Swank later stated that she was devastated at being cut from the show, thinking, “If I’m not good enough for 90210, I’m not good enough for anything.”[16]

Being cut from Beverly Hills, 90210 freed her to audition for the role of Brandon Teena in Boys Don’t Cry.

Roberts. Julia, Erin Brockovich, 2000

Roberts made her first big screen appearance at age 21 in the film Satisfaction (1988), alongside Liam Neeson and Justine Bateman, as a band member looking for a summer gig. She had previously performed a small role opposite her brother Eric, in Blood Red (she has two words of dialogue), filmed in 1987, although it was not released until 1989.

Her first TV appearance was as a juvenile rape victim in the initial season of the series Crime Story with Dennis Farina, in the episode titled “The Survivor,” broadcast on February 13, 1987.

Her first critical success with moviegoers was her performance in the independent film Mystic Pizza in 1988; that same year, she had a role in the fourth-season finale of Miami Vice. In 1989, she was featured in Steel Magnolias, as a young bride with diabetes, and received both her first Oscar nomination (as Best Supporting Actress) and first Golden Globe Award win for her performance.

Luck: Roberts became known to worldwide audiences when she starred with Richard Gere in the Cinderella–Pygmalionesque story, Pretty Woman, in 1990, playing an assertive freelance hooker with a heart of gold. Roberts won the role after Michelle Pfeiffer, Molly Ringwald, Meg Ryan, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Karen Allen, and Daryl Hannah (co-star in Steel Magnolias) turned it down.

The role also earned her a second Oscar nomination, this time as Best Actress, and second Golden Globe Award win, as Motion Picture Best Actress. Pretty Woman saw the highest number of ticket sales in the U.S. ever for a romantic comedy, and made $463.4 million worldwide.

 

Berry, Halle, Monster Ball, 2001

Berry was born Maria Halle Berry in Cleveland, Ohio,[1] on August 14, 1966,[2] to Judith Ann (née Hawkins), an English immigrant from Liverpool,[3] and Jerome Jesse Berry, an African-American man.[1] Her name was legally changed to Halle Maria Berry at the age of five.[4] Her parents selected her middle name from Halle’s Department Store, which was then a local landmark in Cleveland.[1] Berry’s mother worked as a psychiatric nurse, and her father worked in the same hospital as an attendant in the psychiatric ward; he later became a bus driver.[1] They divorced when Berry was four years old, and she and her older sister Heidi Berry-Henderson[5] were raised exclusively by their mother.[1] She has been estranged from her father since childhood,[1][6] noting in 1992 that she did not even know if he was still alive.[5] Her father was abusive to her mother, and Berry has recalled witnessing her mother being beaten daily, kicked down stairs, and hit in the head with a wine bottle.[7] Berry said she was bullied as a kid, so she learned how to fight and protect herself.[8]

Berry grew up in Oakwood, Ohio,[9] and graduated from Bedford High School, where she was a cheerleader, honor student, editor of the school newspaper, and prom queen.[10] She worked in the children’s department at Higbee’s Department store. She then studied at Cuyahoga Community College. In the 1980s, she entered several beauty contests, winning Miss Teen All American 1985 and Miss Ohio USA in 1986.[11] She was the 1986 Miss USA first runner-up to Christy Fichtner of Texas.[11] In the Miss USA 1986 pageant interview competition, she said she hoped to become an entertainer or to have something to do with the media. Her interview was awarded the highest score by the judges.[12] She was the first African-American Miss World entrant in 1986, where she finished sixth and Trinidad and Tobago’s Giselle Laronde was crowned Miss World.[13]

In 1989, Berry moved to New York City to pursue her acting ambitions.[14] During her early time there, she ran out of money and briefly lived in a homeless shelter and a YMCA.[15][16][17] Her situation improved by the end of that year, and she was cast in the role of model Emily Franklin in the short-lived ABC television series Living Dolls, which was shot in New York and was a spin-off of the hit series Who’s the Boss?. During the taping of Living Dolls, she lapsed into a coma and was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. After the cancellation of Living Dolls, she moved to Los Angeles.

Berry’s film debut was in a small role for Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever (1991), in which she played Vivian, a drug addict.[1] That same year, Berry had her first co-starring role in Strictly Business. In 1992, Berry portrayed a career woman who falls for the lead character played by Eddie Murphy in the romantic comedy Boomerang. The following year, she caught the public’s attention as a headstrong biracial slave in the TV adaptation of Queen: The Story of an American Family, based on the book by Alex Haley. Berry was also in the live-action Flintstones film as Sharon Stone, a sultry secretary who attempts to seduce Fred Flintstone.

Berry tackled a more serious role, playing a former drug addict struggling to regain custody of her son in Losing Isaiah (1995), starring opposite Jessica Lange. She portrayed Sandra Beecher in Race the Sun (1996), which was based on a true story, shot in Australia, and co-starred alongside Kurt Russell in Executive Decision. Beginning in 1996, she was a Revlon spokeswoman for seven years and renewed her contract in 2004.[22][23]

She starred alongside Natalie Deselle Reid in the 1997 comedy film B*A*P*S. In 1998, Berry received praise for her role in Bulworth as an intelligent woman raised by activists who gives a politician (Warren Beatty) a new lease on life. The same year, she played the singer Zola Taylor, one of the three wives of pop singer Frankie Lymon, in the biopic Why Do Fools Fall in Love.

In the 1999 HBO biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge,[24] she portrayed Dorothy Dandridge, the first African American woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. It was to Berry a heartfelt project that she introduced, co-produced and fought intensely for it to come through.[1] Berry won awards including a Primetime Emmy Award.

 

Kidman, Nicole, The Hours, 2002

Mary Kidman was born on 20 June 1967, in Honolulu, Hawaii,[5][6] while her Australian parents were temporarily in the United States on student visas.[7] Her mother, Janelle Ann (Glenny),[8][9] a nursing instructor and member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby, edited her husband’s books; her father, Antony Kidman, was a biochemist, clinical psychologist, and author.[10] She has a younger sister, Antonia, who is a journalist and television presenter.[11] Having been born in the US to Australian parents, Kidman holds dual Australian and US citizenship.[12][13] She has English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry.[14][15] Being born in Hawaii, she was given the Hawaiian name “Hōkūlani” ([hoːkuːˈlɐni]), meaning “heavenly star”. The inspiration came from a baby elephant born around the same time at the Honolulu Zoo.[16]

When Kidman was born, her father was a graduate student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He became a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health. While living in Washington, D.C., following Kidman’s birth during the Vietnam War, her parents participated in anti-Vietnam War protests.[17] Her family eventually returned to Australia three years later.[18] She grew up in Sydney where she attended Lane Cove Public School and North Sydney Girls High School. She was enrolled in ballet at the age of three and showed her natural talent for acting during her primary and high school years.

Kidman has said she first aspired to become an actress upon watching Margaret Hamilton’s performance as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.[20] She revealed that she was timid as a child, saying, “I am very shy – really shy – I even had a stutter as a kid, which I slowly got over, but I still regress into that shyness. So I don’t like walking into a crowded restaurant by myself; I don’t like going to a party by myself.”[21] During her teenage years, she attended the Phillip Street Theatre, alongside fellow actress Naomi Watts, and the Australian Theatre for Young People, where she took up drama and mime as she found acting to be a refuge. Owing to her fair skin and naturally red hair, the sun drove her to rehearse in the halls of the theatre.[19] A regular at the Phillip Street Theatre, she was encouraged to pursue acting full-time, which she did by dropping out of high school.

In 1983, 16-year-old Kidman made her film debut in a remake of the Australian holiday classic Bush Christmas.[14] By the end of that year, she had a supporting role in the television series Five Mile Creek. In 1984, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, which caused Kidman to halt her acting work temporarily while she studied massage therapy to help her mother with physical therapy.[22] She began gaining recognition during this decade after appearing in several Australian films, such as the action comedy BMX Bandits (1983) and the romantic comedy Windrider (1986).[23] Throughout the rest of the 1980s, she appeared in various Australian television programs, including the 1987 miniseries Vietnam, for which she won her first Australian Film Institute Award.[24]

Kidman next appeared in the Australian film Emerald City (1988), based on the play of the same name, which earned her a second Australian Film Institute Award. She then starred alongside Sam Neill in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm as Rae Ingram, the wife of a naval officer who is menaced by a castaway at sea, played by Billy Zane. The film proved to be her breakthrough role, and was one of the first films for which she gained international recognition.[25] Regarding her performance, Variety commented how “throughout the film, Kidman is excellent. She gives the character of Rae real tenacity and energy.”[26] Meanwhile, critic Roger Ebert noted the excellent chemistry between the leads, stating, “Kidman and Zane do generate real, palpable hatred in their scenes together.”[27] She followed that up with the Australian miniseries Bangkok Hilton before moving on to star alongside her then-boyfriend and future ex-husband, Tom Cruise, in the 1990 sports action film Days of Thunder, as a young doctor who falls in love with a NASCAR driver.

 

Theron, Charlize, Monster, 2003

At age 16 Theron won a one-year modelling contract at a local competition in Salerno and moved with her mother to Milan, Italy.

After Theron spent a year modelling throughout Europe, she and her mother moved to the US, both New York City and Miami. In New York, she attended the Joffrey Ballet School, where she trained as a ballet dancer until a knee injury closed this career path.

As Theron recalled: “I went to New York for three days to model, and then I spent a winter in New York in a friend’s windowless basement apartment. I was broke, I was taking class at the Joffrey Ballet, and my knees gave out. I realized I couldn’t dance anymore, and I went into a major depression. My mom came over from South Africa and said, “Either you figure out what to do next or you come home, because you can sulk in South Africa”.

In 1994, Theron flew to Los Angeles, on a one-way ticket her mother bought for her, intending to work in the film industry. During the initial months there, she lived in a motel with the $300 budget her mother had given her; she continued receiving checks from New York and lived “from paycheck to paycheck”[26] to the point of stealing bread from a basket in a restaurant to survive.

One day, she went to a Hollywood Boulevard bank to cash a check, including one her mother had sent to help with the rent, but it was rejected because it was out-of-state and she was not an American citizen.

Theron argued and pleaded with the bank teller until talent agent John Crosby, who was the next customer behind her, cashed it for her and gave her his business card.

Spotting

Crosby introduced Theron to an acting school, and in 1995 she played her first non-speaking role in the horror film Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest.[8]

Her first speaking role was Helga Svelgen the hitwoman in 2 Days in the Valley (1996), but despite the movie’s mixed reviews, attention drew to Theron due to her beauty and the scene where she fought Teri Hatcher’s character.[6][28][29] Theron feared being typecast as characters similar to Helga and recalled being asked to repeat her performance in the movie during auditions:[6] “A lot of people were saying, ‘You should just hit while the iron’s hot'[…] But playing the same part over and over doesn’t leave you with any longevity. And I knew it was going to be harder for me, because of what I look like, to branch out to different kinds of roles”.[28]

When auditioning for Showgirls, Theron was introduced to talent agent J. J. Harris by the co-casting director Johanna Ray.[6][22] She recalled being surprised at how much faith Harris had in her potential and referred to Harris as her mentor.[6][22] Harris would find scripts and movies for Theron in a variety of genres and encouraged her to become a producer.[6][22] She would be Theron’s agent for over 15 years until Harris’s death.

Swank, Hilary, Million Dollar, 2004 (1999)

Witherspoon, Reese, 2005

Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon was born on March 22, 1976,[3] at Southern Baptist Hospital, in New Orleans, Louisiana, while her father, John Draper Witherspoon, was a student at Tulane University medical school.[4][5] Her father was born in Georgia and served as a lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve.[6][7] He was in private practice as an otolaryngologist until 2012.[8] Her mother, Mary Elizabeth “Betty” (née Reese) Witherspoon, is from Harriman, Tennessee. She was a professor of nursing at Vanderbilt University and had a PhD in pediatric nursing.[9][10]

Reese Witherspoon has claimed descent from Scottish-born John Witherspoon, who signed the United States Declaration of Independence.[11][12] However, this claim has not been verified by the Society of the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence genealogists.[13] Her parents are still legally married, although they separated in 1996.

Witherspoon was raised an Episcopalian, and has said she is proud of the “definitive Southern upbringing” she received. She has said it gave her “a sense of family and tradition” and taught her about “being conscientious about people’s feelings, being polite, being responsible and never taking for granted what you have in your life”.[15][16][17] At age seven, she was selected as a model for a florist’s television advertisements, which motivated her to take acting lessons.[18] At age 11, she took first place in the Ten-State Talent Fair.[18] She received high grades in school,[18] loved reading, and considered herself “a big dork who read loads of books”.[5] On mentioning her love for books, she said, “I get crazy in a bookstore. It makes my heart beat hard because I want to buy everything.”[19] She has been described as a “multi-achiever” and was nicknamed “Little Type A” by her parents.[20][21] She attended middle school at Harding Academy and graduated from the all-girls’ Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, during which time she was a cheerleader.[22][15] She later attended Stanford University as an English literature major,[23] but left prior to completing her studies to pursue an acting career.[15]

Witherspoon attended an open casting call in 1991 for The Man in the Moon, intending to audition for a bit part;[15] but instead was cast for the lead role of Dani Trant, a 14-year-old country girl who falls in love for the first time with her 17-year-old neighbor. The film takes place in her native State of Louisiana. According to The Guardian, her performance made an early impression.[24] Film critic Roger Ebert commented, “Her first kiss is one of the most perfect little scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie.”[18] For her role, Witherspoon was nominated for a Young Artist Award, in the category of Best Young Actress.[25] Later that year, she made her television debut role in Wildflower with Patricia Arquette.[6][11] In 1992, Witherspoon appeared in the television film Desperate Choices: To Save My Child, portraying a critically ill young girl.[6]

In 1993, Witherspoon played a young wife, Nonnie Parker, in the CBS miniseries Return to Lonesome Dove, appeared in the Disney film A Far Off Place, and had a minor role in Jack the Bear, which garnered her the Young Artist Award for Best Youth Actress Co-star.[6][26] The next year, she had another leading role as Wendy Pfister in the 1994 film S.F.W., directed by Jefery Levy.[27] In 1996, Witherspoon starred in two major films: the thriller Fear alongside Mark Wahlberg,[28][29] as Nicole Walker, a teenager who starts dating a man with obsessive tendencies, and the black-comedy thriller Freeway, alongside Kiefer Sutherland and Brooke Shields, in which she played Vanessa Lutz;[30] a poor girl living in Los Angeles who encounters a serial killer on the way to her grandmother’s home in Stockton.[15] The film received positive reviews from critics; San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle wrote, “Witherspoon, who does a Texas accent, is dazzling, utterly believable in one extreme situation after the other.”[31] Witherspoon’s performance won her the Best Actress Award at the Cognac Police Film Festival and helped establish her as a rising star.[15][32] The production of the film also gave her significant acting experience; she said “Once I overcame the hurdle of that movie – which scared me to death – I felt like I could try anything.”[23]

In 1998, Witherspoon had major roles in three films: Overnight Delivery, Pleasantville and Twilight.[11][33] In Pleasantville, she starred with Tobey Maguire in a tale about 1990s teenage siblings who are magically transported into the setting of a 1950s television series. She portrayed Jennifer, the sister of Maguire’s character who is mainly concerned about appearances, relationships and popularity. Her performance earned her praise and garnered her the Young Hollywood Award for Best Female Breakthrough Performance.[34] Director Gary Ross applauded her efforts saying, “she commits to a character so completely and she understands comedy”.[23]

A year later, Witherspoon co-starred with Alessandro Nivola in the drama thriller Best Laid Plans; she played Lissa, a woman who schemes with her lover Nick to escape a small dead-end town.[6] Also in 1999, she co-starred with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe in the drama Cruel Intentions, a modern version of the 18th-century French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The critic for San Francisco Chronicle praised her performance as Annette Hargrove: “Witherspoon is especially good in the least flashy role, and even when called upon to make a series of cute devilish faces, she pulls it off.”[35] She also appeared in a music video by Marcy Playground for the film’s soundtrack. Next, she appeared in Election (1999) opposite Matthew Broderick, based on Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name.[6] For her portrayal of Tracy Flick, she earned acclaim and her first nominations in the Golden Globes and in the Independent Spirit Awards. She also won the Best Actress Award from the National Society of Film Critics and the Online Film Critics Society.[36][37] Witherspoon received a rank on the list of 100 Greatest Film Performances of All Time by Premiere.[38] Director Alexander Payne said “She’s [Witherspoon] got that quality that men find attractive, while women would like to be her friend. But that’s just the foundation. Nobody else is as funny or brings such charm to things. She can do anything.”[16]

Following the success of Election, Witherspoon struggled to find work due to typecasting.[39] “I think because the character I played was so extreme and sort of shrewish—people thought that was who I was, rather than me going in and creating a part. I would audition for things and I’d always be the second choice—studios never wanted to hire me and I wasn’t losing the parts to big box office actresses but to ones who I guess people felt differently about”, she said.[7] In 2000, Witherspoon had a supporting role in American Psycho as Patrick Bateman’s trophy girlfriend, and made a cameo appearance in Little Nicky as the mother of the Antichrist.[33] She also made a guest appearance in the sixth season of Friends as Rachel Green’s sister Jill.

 

Mirren, Helen, The Queen, 2006

Aged 18, Mirren auditioned for the National Youth Theatre (NYT) and was accepted. Aged 20, she played Cleopatra in the NYT production of Antony and Cleopatra at the Old Vic, a role which Mirren says “launched my career,” and led to her signing with the agent Al Parker.

After the National Youth Theatre, Mirren was invited to join the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), where she played Castiza in Trevor Nunn’s 1966 staging of The Revenger’s Tragedy, Diana in All’s Well That Ends Well (1967), Cressida in Troilus and Cressida (1968), Rosalind in As You Like It (1968), Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1970), Tatiana in Gorky’s Enemies at the Aldwych (1971), and the title role in Miss Julie at The Other Place (1971). In 1972 and 1973, Mirren worked with Peter Brook’s International Centre for Theatre Research, and joined the group’s tour in North Africa and the US, during which they created The Conference of the Birds. She then rejoined the RSC, playing Lady Macbeth at Stratford in 1974 and at the Aldwych Theatre in 1975.

 

Cotillard, Marion, Vie en Rose, 2007

Cotillard’s career as a film actress began in the mid-1990s, with minor roles in Philippe Harel’s The Story of a Boy Who Wanted to Be Kissed (1994), which was her feature film debut at the age of 18, and in Arnaud Desplechin’s My Sex Life… or How I Got into an Argument, and Coline Serreau’s La Belle Verte (both 1996). Also in 1996, Cotillard had her first leading role in the television film Chloé, directed by Dennis Berry, with Cotillard starring as a teenage runaway who is forced into prostitution, opposite Anna Karina.

In 1998, she appeared in Gérard Pirès’ action comedy Taxi, playing Lilly Bertineau, the girlfriend of delivery boy Daniel, played by Samy Naceri. The film was a hit in France and Cotillard was nominated for a César Award for Most Promising Actress.[14] She reprised the role in Taxi 2 (2000) and Taxi 3 (2003).

Cotillard ventured into science fiction with Alexandre Aja’s post-apocalyptic romantic drama, Furia, released in 1999, a year in which she also starred in the Swiss war drama War in the Highlands (La Guerre dans le Haut Pays), for which she won the Best Actress Award at the Autrans Film Festival in 1999.

In 2001, she appeared in Pierre Grimblat’s film Lisa, playing the title role and younger version of Jeanne Moreau’s character, alongside Benoît Magimel and Sagamore Stévenin. She also starred in Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s film Pretty Things (Les Jolies Choses), adapted from the work of feminist writer Virginie Despentes, portraying twins of completely opposite characters, Lucie and Marie; for that role, she was again nominated for a César Award for Most Promising Actress. In 2002, Cotillard starred in Guillaume Nicloux’s thriller A Private Affair (Une Affaire Privée), in which she portrayed the mysterious Clarisse.

Cotillard started the transition into Hollywood when she obtained a supporting role in Tim Burton’s film Big Fish playing Joséphine, the French wife of Billy Crudup’s character, William Bloom. The production was her first American film and gave her the chance to work with well-established actors such as Helena Bonham Carter, Albert Finney, Ewan McGregor, Jessica Lange and Allison Lohman.[1] Big Fish was a critical and commercial success.[17] She also starred in 2003 the French romantic comedy film Love Me If You Dare (Jeux d’enfants), as Sophie Kowalsky, the daughter of Polish immigrants. The film was directed by Yann Samuel and was a box office hit in France.

In 2004, she won the Chopard Trophy of Female Revelation at the Cannes Film Festival, and appeared in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement, as the vengeful Tina Lombardi, for which she won César Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the mystery thriller Innocence, as Mademoiselle Éva; both films were acclaimed by critics.

In 2005, Cotillard starred in 6 films: Steve Suissa’s Cavalcade, Abel Ferrara’s Mary, Richard Berry’s The Black Box (La Boîte Noire); Love Is in the Air (Ma vie en l’air), Burnt Out (Sauf le respect que je vous dois), and Stéphan Guérin-Tillié’s Edy.

In 2006, she played significant roles in 4 features, including Ridley Scott’s romantic dramedy A Good Year, in which she portrayed Fanny Chenal, a French café owner in a small Provençal town, opposite Russell Crowe as a Londoner who inherits a local property. She played Nadine in the Belgian comedy Dikkenek, alongside Mélanie Laurent, and the role of Nicole in Fair Play.

Winslet, Kate, The Reader, 2008

Winslet attended St Mary and All Saints’ Church of England primary school. Living in a family of actors inspired her to pursue acting from young age. She and her sisters participated in amateur stage shows at school and at local youth theatre named Foundations.

When she was 5, Winslet made her first stage appearance as Mary in her school’s production of the Nativity. She was as an overweight child; nicknamed “blubber” by her schoolmates and bullied for her looks; she did not let this defeat her. At 11, Winslet was accepted into the Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead. The school also functioned as agency and took students to London to audition for acting jobs.

She appeared in a Sugar Puffs commercial and dubbed for foreign films. At school, she was made head girl, took part in productions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and played the lead role of Wendy Darling in Peter Pan. She worked simultaneously with the Starmaker Theatre Company in Reading. She participated in over 20 stage productions, but was rarely the lead due to her weight. She played key roles as Miss Agatha Hannigan in Annie, the Mother Wolf in The Jungle Book, and Lena Marelli in Bugsy Malone.

In 1991, within two weeks of finishing her GCSE examinations, Winslet made her screen debut, age 16, as one of cast members of the BBC science fiction TV series Dark Season. Her part was that of Reet, a schoolgirl who helps her classmates fight against a sinister man distributing free computers to school. She did not earn much from the job, and a lack of funds forced Winslet to leave Redroofs. To support herself, she worked at a delicatessen. In 1992, she had small part in the TV film Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, an adaptation of Angus Wilson’s satirical novel. Winslet, who weighed 84 kg; 185 lb at the time, played the daughter of an obese woman. While filming, an off-hand comment from the director Diarmuid Lawrence about the likeness between her and the actress who played her mother prompted Winslet to lose weight.

She next played the young daughter of a bankrupt self-made man (played by Ray Winstone) in the TV sitcom Get Back (1992–93). She also had guest role in 1993 episode of the medical drama series Casualty.

 

Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side, 2009

Bullock was born in Arlington, Virginia, on July 26, 1964, the daughter of Helga Mathilde Meyer (1942–2000), an opera singer and voice teacher from Germany, and John W. Bullock (1925–2018), an Army employee and part-time voice coach from Birmingham, Alabama. Her father, who was in charge of the Army’s Military Postal Service in Europe, was stationed in Nuremberg when he met her mother.

Her parents married in Germany. Bullock’s maternal grandfather was a German rocket scientist from Nuremberg.

The family returned to Arlington, where her father worked with the Army Materiel Command before becoming a contractor for The Pentagon.

Bullock has a younger sister, Gesine Bullock-Prado, who served as president of Bullock’s production company Fortis Films.

For 12 years Bullock was raised in Nuremberg, Germany and Vienna and Salzburg, Austria, and grew up speaking German. She had a Waldorf education in Nuremberg.

As a child, while her mother went on European opera tours, Bullock usually stayed with her aunt Christl and cousin Susanne, the latter of whom later married politician Peter Ramsauer.

Bullock studied ballet and vocal arts as a child and frequently accompanied her mother, taking small parts in her opera productions.

In Nuremberg, she sang in the opera’s children’s choir. Bullock has a scar above her left eye which was caused by a fall into a creek when she was a child.

While she maintains her American citizenship, Bullock applied for German citizenship in 2009.

Bullock attended Washington-Lee High School, where she was a cheerleader and performed in school theater productions. After graduating in 1982, she attended East Carolina University (ECU) in Greenville, North Carolina, where she received a BFA in Drama in 1987. While at ECU, she performed in multiple theater productions including Peter Pan and Three Sisters. She then moved to Manhattan, New York, where she supported herself as a bartender, cocktail waitress, and coat checker while auditioning for roles.

In New York, Bullock took acting classes with Sanford Meisner. She appeared in several student films, and later landed a role in an Off-Broadway play No Time Flat. Director Alan J. Levi was impressed by Bullock’s performance and offered her a part in the made-for-TV film “Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man,” and the Bionic Woman (1989). This led to her being cast in small roles in several independent films as well as in the lead role of the short-lived NBC television version of the film Working Girl (1990).

She went on to appear in several films, such as Love Potion No. 9 (1992), The Thing Called Love (1993) and Fire on the Amazon (1993), before rising to  prominence with supporting role in the sci-fi action film Demolition Man (1993).

Bullock’s big breakthrough came in 1994, when she played Annie Porter, a passenger eventually driving the bus in the smash-hit blockbuster Speed alongside fellow actor Keanu Reeves. She was required to read for Speed to ensure that there was the right chemistry between her and Reeves. She recalls that they had to do “all these really physical scenes together, rolling around on the floor and stuff.” Speed garnered acclaim as a “terrific popcorn thriller [with] outstanding performances from Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, and Sandra Bullock”. It took in US$350 million worldwide.

After Speed, Bullock established herself as a Hollywood leading actress. In the romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping (1995), she portrayed a lonely Chicago Transit Authority token collector who saves the life of a man. While the film made US$182 million globally, it received positive reviews, with Rotten Tomatoes’ critical consensus reading: “While You Were Sleeping is built wholly from familiar ingredients, but assembled with such skill—and with such a charming performance from Sandra Bullock—that it gives formula a good name.”

2010: Natalie Portman, Black Swan, 2010

Natalie Portman (born June 9, 1981) is an Israeli-born American actress and filmmaker. Prolific in film since a teenager, she has starred in blockbusters and also played psychologically troubled women in independent films, for which she has received various accolades, including an Oscar and two Golden Globe Awards.

Portman began her acting career at age 12 by starring as the young protégée of a hitman in the action drama film Léon: The Professional (1994). While in high school, she made her Broadway theatre debut in a 1998 production of The Diary of a Young Girl and gained international recognition for starring as Padmé Amidala in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999). From 1999 to 2003, Portman attended Harvard University for a bachelor’s degree in psychology, while continuing to act in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (2002, 2005) and in The Public Theater’s 2001 revival of Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull. In 2004, Portman was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won a Golden Globe Award for playing a mysterious stripper in the romantic drama Closer.

Portman’s career progressed with her starring roles as Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta (2005), Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), and a troubled ballerina in the psychological horror film Black Swan (2010), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She went on to star in the romantic comedy No Strings Attached (2011) and featured as Jane Foster in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films Thor (2011), and Thor: The Dark World (2013), which established her among the world’s highest-paid actresses.

She has since portrayed Jacqueline Kennedy in the biopic Jackie (2016), earning her third Oscar nomination, and a biologist in the science fiction film Annihilation (2018).

Portman’s directorial ventures include the short film Eve (2008) and the biographical drama A Tale of Love and Darkness (2015). She is vocal about the politics of America and Israel, and is an advocate for animal rights and environmental causes.

Portman was born in Jerusalem, to parents of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. She was given the Hebrew name Neta-Lee (Hebrew: “plant for me”). She is the only child of Shelley (née Stevens), an American homemaker who works as Portman’s agent, and Avner Hershlag, an Israeli gynecologist. Her maternal grandparents were American Jews and her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants to Israel.

Portman and her family first lived in Washington, D.C., but relocated to Connecticut in 1988 and then moved to Long Island, in 1990. While living in Washington, Portman attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland.[10] She learned to speak Hebrew[15] while living on Long Island and attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Nassau County.[12][16] She studied ballet and modern dance at the American Theater Dance Workshop, and regularly attended the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. Describing her early life, Portman has said that she was “different from the other kids. I was more ambitious. I knew what I liked and what I wanted, and I worked very hard. I was a very serious kid.”

Portman has professed an interest in foreign languages since childhood and has studied French, Japanese, German, and Arabic.

When Portman was 10 years old, a Revlon agent spotted her at a pizza restaurant and asked her to become a child model. She turned down the offer but used the opportunity to get an acting agent.[22][23] She auditioned for the 1992 off-Broadway musical Ruthless! about a girl who is prepared to commit murder to get the lead in a school play.[24] Portman and Britney Spears were chosen as the understudies for star Laura Bell Bundy.[25]

Career
1994–1998: Early work
Six months after Ruthless! ended, Portman auditioned for and secured a leading role in Luc Besson’s action drama Léon: The Professional (1994).[23] To protect her privacy, she adopted her paternal grandmother’s maiden name, Portman, as her stage name.[26][27] She played Mathilda, an orphan child who befriends a middle-aged hitman (played by Jean Reno). Her parents were reluctant to let her do the part due to the explicit sexual and violent nature of the script, but agreed after Besson took out the nudity and killings committed by Portman’s character.[28] Portman herself opined that after those scenes were removed, she found nothing objectionable about the content.[29] Even so, her mother was displeased with some of the “sexual twists and turns” in the finished film, which were not part of the script.[21] Hal Hinson of The Washington Post commended Portman for bringing a “genuine sense of tragedy” to her part, but Peter Rainer of Los Angeles Times believed that she “isn’t enough of an actress to unfold Mathilda’s pain” and criticized Besson’s sexualization of her character.

 

Streep, Meryl, 2011 (See 1982)

Lawrence, Jennifer, 2012, Silver Linings Playbook

Jennifer Shrader Lawrence was born on August 15, 1990, in Indian Hills, Kentucky, to Gary, a construction company owner, and Karen (née Koch), a summer camp manager.

She has two older brothers, Ben and Blaine. Lawrence’s parents were not anticipating a child when she was conceived, and Karen once said “We thought we were finished having kids. We got rid of the baby bed and everything.”

The family owned a horse farm when she was a child, and Lawrence owned a horse named Muffin. Her mother raised her to be “tough” like her brothers, as she did not want Lawrence to be “a diva.” Karen also refused to let her play with other girls in preschool, as she deemed her “too rough” with them and worried she would hurt them. Even Lawrence admitted she was a “hyper” child. Lawrence was educated at the Kammerer Middle School in Louisville. She was raised as a Christian.

Lawrence did not enjoy her childhood due to hyperactivity and social anxiety, and considered herself a misfit among her peers. “I didn’t have any friends. I remember being kind of lonely,” she recalled. Lawrence’s anxieties vanished when performing on stage–acting gave her a sense of accomplishment.

Her school activities included cheerleading, softball, field hockey and basketball, which she played on a boys’ team coached by her father. Lawrence did not enjoy these activities: “There’s something about team sports, classes, I didn’t take well to it. I didn’t like it. … I hated team sports.”

Growing up, she was fond of horseback riding and visited a local horse farm. Lawrence has an injured tailbone as a result of being thrown from a horse. When her father worked from home, she performed for him, often dressing up as a clown or ballerina.

Lawrence had her first acting assignment at age 9, playing a Ninevite prostitute in a church play based on the Book of Jonah.

For the next few years, she continued taking parts in church plays and school musicals.

Spotted

Lawrence was 14 and on a family vacation in New York City when she was spotted on the street by talent scout, who arranged for her to audition for talent agents.

Her mother was not keen on her pursuing an acting career, but she briefly moved her family to New York to let Lawrence read for roles. After her first cold reading, the agents said that hers was the best they had heard from someone so young; however, her mother convinced her that they were lying. Lawrence early experiences were difficult because she felt lonely and friendless.

She signed with CESD Talent Agency, which convinced her parents to let her audition for roles in Los Angeles. While her mother encouraged her to go into modeling, she insisted on pursuing acting, which she considered a “natural fit” for her abilities, and turned down several modeling offers, though she modeled for Abercrombie & Fitch before beginning an acting career, and the modeling photos were never released.

She dropped out of school at 14, without receiving a General Educational Development (GED) or diploma. Lawrence is “self-educated”–her career was her priority. Between her acting jobs, she made regular visits to Louisville, where she was an assistant nurse at her mother’s camp.

Lawrence began her acting career with a minor role in the television pilot Company Town (2006), which was never sold.

She followed it with guest roles in several TV shows, including Monk (2006) and Medium (2007).

She received her first part as a series regular on the TBS sitcom The Bill Engvall Show, in which she played Lauren, the rebellious teenage daughter of a family living in suburban Louisville, Colorado. The series premiered in 2007 and ran for three seasons.  In 2009 Lawrence won a Young Artist Award for Outstanding Young Performer in a TV Series for the role.

Lawrence made her film debut in the 2008 Garden Party, in which she played a troubled teenager named Tiff.

She then appeared in director Guillermo Arriaga’s feature film debut The Burning Plain (2008), a drama narrated in hyperlink format. She was cast as the teenage daughter of Kim Basinger’s character, who discovers her mother’s extramarital affair. She shared the role with Charlize Theron, who played the older version of her character.

Her performance earned her the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Emerging Actress at the 2008 Venice Film Fest.

The same year, she appeared in the music video for the song “The Mess I Made” by Parachute. In 2008, she starred in Lori Petty’s drama The Poker House as the oldest of three sisters living with a drug-abusing mother. She won an Outstanding Performance Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival for her performance in the film.

Lawrence’s breakthrough role came in Debra Granik’s indie drama Winter’s Bone (2010), based on the novel of the same name by Daniel Woodrell. She played Ree Dolly, a poverty-stricken teenage girl of 17 in the Ozark Mountains who cares for her mentally ill mother and younger siblings while searching for her missing father.

She traveled to the Ozarks a week before filming began to live with the family on whom the story was based, and in preparation for the role, she learned to fight, skin squirrels, and chop wood. The production won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The actress was awarded the National Board of Review Award for Breakthrough Performance, and received her first nominations for the SAG Award and Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the second-youngest Best Actress Oscar nominee at the time.

In 2011, Lawrence took on a supporting role in Like Crazy, a romantic drama about long-distance relationships, starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones.

She then appeared again with Yelchin in Jodie Foster’s The Beaver, alongside Foster and Mel Gibson. Filmed in 2009, the production was delayed due to controversy concerning Gibson and earned less than half of its $21 million budget.

 

Blanchett, Cate, 2013, Blue Jasmin

Catherine Elise Blanchett was born on 14 May 1969 in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe. Her Australian mother, June Gamble, worked as property developer and teacher, and her American father, Robert DeWitt Blanchett Jr., a Texas native, was a US Navy Chief Petty Officer who later worked as advertising executive. The two met when Blanchett’s father’s ship broke down in Melbourne

When Blanchett was 10, her father died of a heart attack, leaving her mother to raise the family on her own.

Blanchett is the middle of three children, she has an older brother Bob Blanchett (born 1968), and a younger sister Genevieve Blanchett (born 1971). Her ancestry includes English, some Scottish, and remote French roots.

Blanchett has described herself as “part extrovert, part wallflower” in childhood.

During teenage years she had penchant for dressing in traditionally masculine clothing, and went through goth and punk phases, at one point even shaving her head.

She attended primary school in Melbourne at Ivanhoe East Primary School; for secondary education, she attended Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School and then Methodist Ladies’ College, where she explored her passion for the performing arts.

In her late teens and early twenties, she worked at a nursing home in Victoria.

She studied economics and fine arts at the University of Melbourne but dropped out after one year to travel overseas.

While in Egypt, Blanchett was asked to be an American cheerleader, as an extra in the Egyptian boxing movie, Kaboria; in need of money, she accepted.

Upon returning to Australia, and after working in the pocket theatres of Melbourne, including La Mama, she moved to Sydney, and enrolled at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), from which she graduated from in 1992 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

Blanchett’s first stage role was opposite Geoffrey Rush, in 1992, in David Mamet play “Oleanna” for the Sydney Theatre Company.

That year, she was also cast as Clytemnestra in a production of Sophocles’ Electra. A couple of weeks after rehearsals, the actress playing the title role pulled out, and director Lindy Davies cast Blanchett in the role. Her performance as Electra became one of her most acclaimed at NIDA.

In 1993, Blanchett was awarded the Sydney Theatre Critics’ Best Newcomer Award for her performance in Timothy Daly’s Kafka Dances and won Best Actress for her performance in Mamet’s Oleanna, making her the first actor to win both categories in the same year.

Blanchett played the role of Ophelia in an acclaimed 1994–1995 Company B production of Hamlet directed by Neil Armfield, starring Rush and Richard Roxburgh, and was nominated for Green Room Award.

She appeared in the 1994 TV miniseries Heartland opposite Ernie Dingo, the miniseries Bordertown (1995) with Hugo Weaving, and in an episode of Police Rescue entitled “The Loaded Boy”.

She also appeared in the 50-minute drama short Parklands (1996), which received an Australian Film Institute (AFI) nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Blanchett made her feature film debut in supporting role as spirited young Australian nurse captured by the Japanese Army during World War II, in Bruce Beresford’s film Paradise Road (1997), which co-starred Glenn Close and Frances McDormand.

Paradise Road made just over $2 million at the box office on a budget of $19 million and received mixed reviews from critics, with Roger Ebert criticising the film’s “lack of a story arc”.

Her first leading role came later that year as eccentric heiress Lucinda Leplastrier in Gillian Armstrong’s romantic drama Oscar and Lucinda (1997), opposite Ralph Fiennes. Blanchett received wide acclaim for her performance, with Emanuel Levy of Variety declaring, “luminous newcomer Blanchett, in a role originally intended for Judy Davis, is bound to become a major star.”

She earned her first AFI Award nomination as Best Leading Actress for Oscar and Lucinda which she lost to Deborah Mailman in Radiance (1998).

She won the AFI Best Actress Award in the same year for her starring role as Lizzie in the romantic comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie (1997), co-starring Richard Roxburgh and Frances O’Connor. By 1997, Blanchett had accrued significant praise and recognition in her native Australia.

Her first high-profile international role was a young Elizabeth I of England in the critically acclaimed historical drama Elizabeth (1998), directed by Shekhar Kapur. The film catapulted her to stardom, and her performance garnered wide recognition, earning her the British Academy Award (BAFTA), and her first Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and Academy nomination for Best Actress

 

Moore, Julianne, 2014, Still Alice

Moore was born Julie Anne Smith on December 3, 1960, at the Fort Bragg army installation in North Carolina, the oldest of three siblings.

Her father, Peter Moore Smith, a paratrooper in the US Army during the Vietnam War, attained the rank of colonel and became a military judge. Her mother, Anne (née Love), was a British psychologist and social worker from Greenock, Scotland, who immigrated to the United States in 1951 with her family. Moore has a younger sister, Valerie Smith, and a younger brother, the novelist Peter Moore Smith.

As Moore is half-Scottish, she claimed British citizenship in 2011 to honor her deceased mother.

Moore frequently moved around the US as a child, due to her father’s occupation.

She was close to her family as a result, but has said she never had the feeling of coming from one particular place. The family lived in multiple locations, including Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Panama, Nebraska, Alaska, New York, and Virginia, and Moore attended nine different schools. The constant relocating made her an insecure child, and she struggled to establish friendships.

Despite these difficulties, Moore later remarked that an itinerant lifestyle was beneficial to her future career: “When you move around a lot, you learn that behavior is mutable. I would change, depending on where I was. It teaches you to watch, to reinvent, that character can change.”

When Moore was 16, the family moved from Falls Church, Virginia, where Moore had been attending J.E.B. Stuart High School, to Frankfurt, West Germany, where she attended Frankfurt American High School. She was clever and studious, a self-proclaimed “good girl.”

She planned to become a doctor. She had never considered performing, or even attended the theatre, but she was an avid reader and it was this hobby that led her to begin acting at school.

She appeared in several plays, including Tartuffe and Medea, and with the encouragement of English teacher, she chose to pursue a theatrical career. Moore’s parents supported her decision, but asked that she train at university to provide the added security of a college degree. She was accepted to Boston University and graduated with a BFA in Theatre in 1983.

“There was already a Julie Smith, a Julie Anne Smith, there was everything. My father’s middle name is Moore; my mother’s name is Anne. So I just slammed the Anne onto the Julie. That way, I could use both of their names and not hurt anyone’s feelings. But it’s horrible to change your name. I’d been Julie Smith my whole life, and I didn’t want to change it.”Moore explaining why and how she adopted her stage name

Moore moved to New York City after graduating, and worked as a waitress. After registering her stage name with Actors’ Equity, she began her career in 1985 with off-Broadway theatre.

TV: Her first screen role came in 1985, in an episode of the soap opera The Edge of Night.

Her break came the following year, when she joined the cast of As the World Turns. Playing the dual roles of half-sisters Frannie and Sabrina Hughes, she found this intensive work to be an important learning experience, and she said of it fondly: “I gained confidence and learned to take responsibility.”[16] Moore performed on the show until 1988, when she won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Ingenue in a Drama Series.[21][22] Before leaving As the World Turns, she had a role in the 1987 CBS miniseries I’ll Take Manhattan.

Once she finished her contract at World Turns, she played Ophelia in a Guthrie Theater production of Hamlet opposite Željko Ivanek.[17] The actress returned intermittently to TV over the next three years, appearing in TV movies Money, Power, Murder (1989), The Last to Go (1991), and Cast a Deadly Spell (1991).

In 1990, Moore began working with stage director Andre Gregory on a workshop production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Described by Moore as “one of the most fundamentally important acting experiences I ever had,” the group spent four years exploring the text and giving intimate performances to friends.

Film debut

Also in 1990, Moore made her film debut as a mummy’s victim in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, a low-budget horror that she described as “terrible.”

Her next film role, in 1992, introduced her to a wide audience. The thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle – in which she played the main character’s ill-fated friend – was number one at the US box office, and Moore caught the attention of several critics. The same year, the crime comedy The Gun in Betty Lou’s Handbag, as the protagonist’s kooky sister. Moore continued to play supporting roles throughout 1993, first featuring in the erotic thriller Body of Evidence as Madonna’s love rival. The film was a failure and mocked, and she later regretted her involvement.

She had greater success in a 1993 romantic comedy with Johnny Depp. In Benny & Joon, she played a gentle waitress who falls for Aidan Quinn’s character, Benny.

Moore also appeared briefly as a doctor in one of the year’s biggest hits, the Harrison Ford thriller The Fugitive.

Rise to fame (1993–1997)

Robert Altman gave Moore her breakthrough role in Short Cuts (1993). He saw Moore in the Uncle Vanya production, and was impressed to cast her in his next project: the ensemble drama Short Cuts (1993), based on short stories by Raymond Carver. Moore was pleased to work with him, as his film 3 Women (1977) gave her a strong appreciation for cinema when she saw it in college.

Playing artist Marian Wyman was an experience she found difficult, as she was a “total unknown” surrounded by established actors, but this proved to be Moore’s breakout role. Variety magazine described her as “arresting” and noted that her monologue, delivered naked from the waist down, would “no doubt be the most discussed scene” of the film. Short Cuts was critically acclaimed, and received awards for Best Ensemble Cast at the Venice Film Fest.

Moore received an individual nomination for Best Supporting Female at the Independent Spirit Awards, and the monologue scene earned he degree of notoriety.

Short Cuts was one of a trio of successive film appearances that boosted Moore’s reputation. It was followed in 1994 with Vanya on 42nd Street, a filmed version of her ongoing Uncle Vanya workshop production, directed by Louis Malle. Moore’s performance of Yelena was described as “simply outstanding” by Time Out, and she won the Boston Society of Film Critics award for Best Actress.

Following this, Moore was given her first lead role, playing unhappy suburban housewife who develops multiple chemical sensitivity in Todd Haynes’ low-budget film Safe (1995). She had to lose substantial amount of weight for the role, which made her ill, and she vowed never to change her body for a film again.

In their review, Empire magazine writes that Safe “first established [Moore’s] credentials as perhaps the finest actress of her generation.” David Thomson later described it as “one of the most arresting, original and accomplished films of the 1990s,” and the performance earned Moore an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Actress. Reflecting on these three roles, Moore has said, “They all came out at once, and I suddenly had this profile. It was amazing.”

Moore’s next appearance was supporting role in the comedy-drama Roommates (1995), playing the daughter-in-law of Peter Falk.

Her following film, Nine Months (1995), was crucial in establishing her as a leading lady in Hollywood. The romantic comedy, directed by Chris Columbus and co-starring Hugh Grant, was poorly reviewed, but a box office success; it remains one of her highest-grossing films.

Hollywood production, as Moore appeared alongside Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas in the thriller Assassins (1995). Despite negativity from critics, the film earned $83.5 million worldwide. Moore’s only appearance of 1996 came in the Merchant Ivory film Surviving Picasso, where she played the artist Dora Maar opposite Anthony Hopkins. The period drama met with poor reviews.

A key point in Moore’s career came when she was cast bySpielberg to star as paleontologist Dr. Sarah Harding in The Lost World: Jurassic Park – the sequel to his 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park. Filming the big-budget production was a new experience for Moore, and she enjoyed herself “tremendously”. It was a physically demanding role: “There was so much hanging everywhere. We hung off everything available, plus we climbed, ran, jumped off things … it was just non-stop.” The Lost World (1997) finished as one of the ten highest-grossing films in history, and was pivotal in making Moore sought-after actress: “Suddenly I had a commercial film career”, she said.

The Myth of Fingerprints was her second film in 1997, during its production she met her future husband, director Bart Freundlich.

 

Larson, Brie, 2015, Room

Larson was born Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers on October 1, 1989, in Sacramento, California, to Heather (Edwards) and Sylvain Desaulniers. Her parents were homeopathic chiropractors who ran a practice together, and they have another daughter, Milaine.

Her father is French Canadian, and in her childhood, Larson spoke French as her first language. She was mostly homeschooled, which she believed allowed her to explore innovative and abstract experiences.

Describing her early life, Larson has said that she was “straight-laced and square,” and that she shared a close bond with her mother but was shy and suffered from social anxiety.

During the summer, she would write and direct her own home movies in which she cast her cousins and filmed in her garage.

At age six, she expressed interest in becoming an actress, later remarking that the “creative arts was just something that was always in me.”

That same year, she auditioned for a training program at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where she became the youngest student admitted.

Larson experienced trauma when her parents divorced when she was seven.

She had a dysfunctional relationship with her father: “As a kid I tried to understand him and understand the situation. But he didn’t do himself any favors. I don’t think he ever really wanted to be a parent.”

Soon after their split, Heather relocated to Los Angeles with her two daughters to fulfill Larson’s acting ambition. They had limited financial means and lived in a small apartment near Hollywood studio lots at Burbank.

Larson described her experience, “We had a crappy one-room apartment where the bed came out of the wall and we each had three articles of clothing. Larson has recounted fond memories of that period and has credited her mother for doing the best she could for them.

As her last name was difficult to pronounce, she adopted the stage name Larson from her Swedish great-grandmother as well as an American Girl doll named Kirsten Larson that she received as a child.

Her first job was performing a commercial parody for Barbie, named “Malibu Mudslide Barbie”, in a 1998 episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

She subsequently took guest roles in several TV series, including Touched by an Angel and Popular.

In 2000, she was cast in the Fox sitcom Schimmel, which was canceled before airing when its star, Robert Schimmel, was diagnosed with cancer.

“I was so insecure and so hard on myself back then. But there was a moment when I started doing the math. It took me two hours to get ready every day—hair and makeup, so many clothes, trying to make sure everything matched really well—and I had this intense epiphany. I realized how much time I was spending getting ready for life—I wasn’t actually living it. It was the most terrified I’ve ever been in my life. So I went in the exact opposite way.”—Larson recalling her early career, in 2015

Larson’s first major role came as Emily, the younger daughter of Bob Saget’s character, in the WB sitcom Raising Dad, which aired for one season during the 2001–2002 television schedule.

She was next hired for the ABC sitcom “Hope & Faith,” but she and other cast members were replaced after an unaired pilot.

In 2003, she starred alongside Beverley Mitchell in the Disney Channel movie Right on Track, based on the junior drag race star sisters Erica and Courtney Enders, and played minor roles in the 2004 comedies Sleepover and 13 Going on 30.

Larson developed interest in music at age 11 when she learned to play the guitar. A music executive encouraged her to write her own songs, and she began self-recording and uploading tracks to her own website. After failing to get cast as Wendy Darling in the 2003 film Peter Pan, Larson penned and recorded a song named “Invisible Girl”, which received airplay on KIIS-FM.

She signed a recording deal with Tommy Mottola of Casablanca Records; she and Lindsay Lohan were the only artists signed by the label at that time.

In 2005, she released the album Finally Out of P.E., in which she also co-wrote songs with other songwriters, including Blair Daly, Pam Sheyne, Lindy Robbins, and Holly Brook.

She named it after a gym teacher she disliked and has said that the songs she wrote were mostly about failed job opportunities. One of her singles, “She Said”, was featured in the MTV series Total Request Live, was listed by Billboard in their weekly listings of the most-played videos in the channel, and peaked at number 31 on the Billboard Hot Single Sales.

Larson went on tour with Jesse McCartney for Teen People’s “Rock in Shop” mall concerts, opened for him during his Beautiful Soul tour, and also performed in New York City at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Even so, the album was not a success, selling only 3,500 copies. Larson later admitted to being disillusioned with her music career, saying, “I wanted to write all my own songs, and [the recording company] were afraid of that. I wanted to wear sneakers and play my guitar—they wanted heels and wind blown hair.”

In 2006, Larson was cast alongside Logan Lerman and Cody Linley in the comedy film Hoot, about young vigilantes trying to save a group of owls. It received poor reviews.

She had a small part in the Amber Heard-starring drama Remember the Daze.

She launched an arts and literature magazine, named Bunnies and Traps, for which she wrote her own opinion columns and accepted submissions from other artists and writers. Larson has said that she frequently considered giving up acting at that time, as she found it difficult to find much work, blaming it on filmmakers’ inability to typecast her. She was particularly discouraged when she lost out on key roles in the films Thirteen (2003) and Juno (2007). To support herself, Larson worked as a club DJ.

In 2009, Larson began playing Kate Gregson, the sardonic teenage daughter of Toni Collette’s character, coping with her mother’s dissociative identity disorder, in the Showtime comedy-drama series United States of Tara. Portia Doubleday was initially cast in the role but was replaced with Larson after filming the pilot episode.

Her character’s journey to find meaning in life mirrored that of her own, and she was upset when the show was canceled after three seasons in 2011.

Also in 2009, she starred alongside Rooney Mara in Tanner Hall, a coming-of-age film about four girls in boarding school.

In her two other film releases that year, she played a scatterbrained cheerleader in House Broken and a popular high schooler in Just Peck.

At the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2010, Larson appeared in stage production of Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town. Directed by Nicholas Martin, it featured her in the role of Emily Webb, a precocious young girl.

In film, she featured in Noah Baumbach’s comedy-drama “Greenberg” and Edgar Wright’s comedy Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Stone, Emma, 2016, La La Land

McDormand, Frances, 2017, Three Billboards 

See 1996

 

Colman, Olivia, The Favourite, 2018

Sarah Caroline Colman was born in Norwich on January 30, 1974, the daughter of nurse Mary (née Leakey) and chartered surveyor Keith Colman.

She was privately educated at Norwich High School for Girls and Gresham’s School in Holt, Norfolk. Her first role was Jean Brodie in a school production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at the age of 16. She cites her mother’s interrupted career as a ballet dancer as an inspiration to pursue acting professionally. Colman spent a term studying primary teaching at Homerton College, Cambridge before studying drama at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, from which she graduated in 1999.

During her time at Cambridge, she auditioned for the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club and met future co-stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

Colman was a subject of the UK genealogy program Who Do You Think You Are? in July 2018. Although she expected that her family tree would mainly relate to Norfolk, it was discovered that her fourth great-grandfather, Richard Campbell Bazett, had been born on the island of Saint Helena and that he worked in London for the East India Company. Bazett’s son, Colman’s third great-grandfather Charles Bazett, married Harriot Slessor.

Researchers discovered that she was born in the Indian city of Kishanganj, lost her British father when she was aged three, and then made the journey to England alone. Slessor’s passage was paid for by her paternal grandmother. The episode speculated that Slessor’s mother might have been Indian, but did not present concrete proof; after the episode aired, the Berkshire Record Office published the will of Slessor’s mother, which proved that her name was Seraphina Donclere, evidently of European origin, and that she died in 1810.

Colman made her professional acting debut in 2000, at the age of 26, as part of the BBC2 comedy sketch show Bruiser. She has since appeared in roles in many BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 television series, such as People Like Us, Look Around You, Black Books, The Office, The Time of Your Life and provided the voice-over for Five’s poll for Britain’s Funniest Comedy Character.

Colman regularly featured in BBC Radio 4 comedies, such as Concrete Cow, Think the Unthinkable, The House of Milton Jones and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. She was also the voice of Minka, the Polish secretary in the Radio 4 comedy Hut 33, set in a fictional codebreaking hut of the real-life Bletchley Park during World War II. Colman appeared as Bev, alongside Mark Burdis as Kev, in a series of television adverts for AA car insurance. She provided voices for the Andrex “be kind to your behind” adverts and Glade fragrance adverts, where her character is a gorilla.

 

Zellweger, Renee, 2019, Judy

Renée Kathleen Zellweger was born on April 25, 1969, in Katy, Texas. Her father, Emil Erich Zellweger, is from the Swiss town of Au, St. Gallen. He was a mechanical and electrical engineer who worked in the oil refining business. Her mother, Kjellfrid Irene (née Andreassen), is Norwegian of Kven and Sámi descent. Kjellfrid grew up in Ekkerøy near the town Vadsø in the northern part of Norway. She was a nurse and midwife who moved to the US to work as a governess for a Norwegian family in Texas. Referring to her religious background, Zellweger has described herself as being raised in a family of “lazy Catholics and Episcopalians.”

Zellweger attended Katy High School, where she was a cheerleader, gymnast, and debate team member.  She also participated in soccer, basketball, baseball, and football.

In 1986, her academic paper, “The Karankawas and Their Roots”, won third place in the first ever Houston Post High School Natural Science Essay Contest. After high school, she enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1992.  While at the university, Zellweger took a drama course as an elective, which sparked her interest in acting.

In Zellweger’s junior year, her father lost his job and was unable to support her at college, so she took a job as cocktail waitress in Austin, Texas.

Zellweger said of the job, “I learned a lot. As much as I did in my classes that that club paid for… I learned not to judge people, [and] that things are not black and white.” Zellweger began getting small parts acting, and earned her Screen Actors Guild card for doing a Coors Light commercial. Also while in college, she did “a bit part … as a local hire” in the Austin-filmed horror-comedy film My Boyfriend’s Back, playing “the girl in the beauty shop, maybe two lines. But the beauty shop [scene] got cut.” Her first job after graduation was working in a beef commercial, while simultaneously auditioning for roles around Houston, Texas.

While in Texas, Zellweger appeared in several independent and low-budget films: A Taste for Killing (1992), followed by a role in ABC TV miniseries “Murder in the Heartland” (1993).

In 1994, she appeared in Reality Bites, the directorial debut of Ben Stiller, and in the biographical film 8 Seconds, directed by John G. Avildsen.

Her first main role came with the 1994 horror film Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, alongside Matthew McConaughey. She played a teenager who leaves a prom early with three friends who get into a car accident, which leads to their meeting a murderous family, led by the iconic Leatherface.

In the crime comedy Love and a .45 (1994), Zellweger played a woman who plans a robbery with her boyfriend. Although the film received limited release, the part earned her Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance.

Zellweger relocated to Los Angeles, a move she had postponed several times because she believed she lacked the talent and experience to be a competitive actor in that city. She next appeared in the coming-of-age drama Empire Records (1995).

Zellweger became widely known to audiences with Jerry Maguire (1996), in which she played a single mother and the romantic interest of a glossy sports agent (Tom Cruise). The film received unanimous critical acclaim and grossed over US$273 million worldwide.[31][32] It was Cruise who chose her to play his love interest and later credited her with “revealing the core humanity of the movie”.[33] Roger Ebert, showing approval of Zellweger and Cruise’s chemistry in it, wrote: “The film is often a delight, especially when Cruise and Zellweger are together on the screen. He plays Maguire with the earnestness of a man who wants to find greatness and happiness in an occupation where only success really counts. She plays a woman who believes in this guy she loves, and reminds us that true love is about idealism.”[34] She was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.[15]

In the religious drama A Price Above Rubies (1998), Zellweger starred as a young woman who finds it difficult to conform to the restrictions imposed on her by the community.[35] The film flopped at the box office,  but Zellweger was applauded by some critics such as Ebert, who, once again impressed by her, stated that she gave a “ferociously strong performance.”[38] Zellweger also starred in the 1998 drama One True Thing, opposite William Hurt and Meryl Streep. She played a woman, based on author Anna Quindlen, forced to put her life on hold in order to care for her mother, who is dying of cancer. One True Thing took in a modest US$23 million in the US,[39] but had a favorable critical response.

After playing the female lead opposite Chris O’Donnell in the little-seen romantic comedy The Bachelor (1999).

 

Chastain, Jessica, Eyes of Tammy, 2022

Jessica Michelle Chastain was born on March 24, 1977, in Sacramento, California to Jerri Renee Hastey (née Chastain) and rock musician Michael Monasterio. Her parents were both teenagers when she was born. Chastain is reluctant to publicly discuss her family background. She was estranged from Monasterio, who died in 2013, and has stated that no father is listed on her birth certificate.

Chastain has two sisters and two brothers. Her younger sister, Juliet, committed suicide in 2003 following years of drug addiction. Chastain was raised in Sacramento by her mother and stepfather, Michael Hastey, a firefighter. Her family struggled financially. Her stepfather was the first person to make her feel secure. She shares a close bond with her maternal grandmother, Marilyn, and credits her as someone who “always believed in me”.

Chastain developed an interest in acting at age 7, after her grandmother took her to a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. She would regularly put on amateur shows with other children, and considered herself to be their artistic director. As a student at the El Camino Fundamental High School in Sacramento, Chastain struggled academically.

She was a loner and considered herself a misfit in school, eventually finding an outlet in the performing arts. She has described how she used to miss school to read Shakespeare,[12] whose plays she became enamored with after attending the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with her classmates.

With too many absences during her senior year in school, Chastain did not qualify for graduation, but later obtained an adult diploma.[10] She later attended Sacramento City College from 1996 to 1997, during which she was a member of the institution’s debate team.

Describing her early childhood, she recalled: I grew up with a single mother who worked very hard to put food on our table. We did not have money. There were many nights when we had to go to sleep without eating. It was a very difficult upbringing. Things weren’t easy for me growing up.

In 1998, Chastain finished her education at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and made her professional debut, age 21, as Juliet in a production of Romeo and Juliet staged by TheatreWorks, a company in the San Francisco Bay Area. The production led her to audition for the Juilliard School in New York City, where she was accepted and granted scholarship funded by actor Robin Williams.

In her first year at the school, Chastain suffered from anxiety and was worried about being dropped from the program, spending time reading and watching films. Her participation in a successful production of The Seagull during her second year helped build her confidence. She graduated from the school with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2003.

Shortly before graduating from Juilliard, Chastain attended an event for final-year in Los Angeles, where she was signed to talent holding deal by the TV producer John Wells.

She relocated to Los Angeles and started auditioning for jobs. She initially found the process difficult, which she believed was due to other people finding her difficult to categorize as a redhead with an unconventional look.

TV came First

In her TV debut, The WB network’s 2004 pilot remake of the 1960s gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, she was cast as Carolyn Stoddard. The pilot was directed by P. J. Hogan, but the series was never picked up for broadcast.

She appeared as a guest performer on the medical drama series ER playing a woman “psychotic”, which led to her getting more unusual parts such as accident victims or characters with mental illness.

She went on to appear in such roles in a few other television series from 2004 to 2007, including Veronica Mars (2004), Close to Home (2006), Blackbeard (2006), and Law & Order: Trial by Jury (2005–06).

Michelle Yeo, Everything, Everywhere, 2022

 

Stone, Emma, Poor Things, 2023

See 2016

Mikey Madison, Anora, 2024

Mikaela Madison Rosberg, born in 1998 to Jewish parents in Los Angeles, grew up in the San Fernando Valley. Both her parents are psychologists, and she has two brothers (one is her twin) and two sisters.

Acting at age 14

Madison initially trained as a competitive horseback rider before switching to acting at age 14. She was homeschooled after the seventh grade.

Madison made her acting debut in 2013, appearing in the short films Retirement and Pani’s Box.

In 2014, after appearing in the short film Bound for Greatness, she filmed her first feature film, Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey, which was not released until 2017.