Shirley MacLaine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Shirley MacLaine | |
|---|---|
in The Apartment (1960)
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| Born | Shirley MacLean Beaty 24 April 1934 Richmond, Virginia, United States |
| Occupation | Actress, singer, dancer, author, activist |
| Years active | 1953–present |
| Spouse(s) | Steve Parker (m. 1954–1982; divorced; 1 child) |
| Children | Sachi Parker |
| Family | Warren Beatty (brother) |
| Website | |
| www.shirleymaclaine.com | |
In 2012 she received the 40th AFI Life Achievement Award, the highest honor for a career in the US film industry, by the American Film Institute, and in 2013 received the Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts.
MacLaine's younger brother is actor Warren Beatty. Known for her New Age beliefs and interest in spirituality and reincarnation, she has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career.
Contents
Early life
Named after Shirley Temple, Shirley MacLean Beaty was born in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Ira Owens Beaty,[1] was a professor of psychology, public school administrator, and real estate agent, and her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a drama teacher, originally from Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada. Shirley's younger brother is the actor/writer/director Warren Beatty; he changed the spelling of his surname when he became an actor.[2] Their parents raised them as Baptists.[3] Her uncle (her mother's brother-in-law) was A. A. MacLeod, a Communist member of the Ontario legislature in the 1940s.[citation needed] While Shirley was still a child, Ira Beaty moved his family from Richmond to Norfolk, and then to Arlington and Waverly, eventually taking a position at Arlington's Thomas Jefferson Junior High School. Shirley played baseball on an all-boys team, holding the record for most home runs which earned her the nickname "Powerhouse". During the 1950s, the family resided in the Dominion Hills section of Arlington.[4]She had weak ankles as a toddler, so her mother decided to enroll her in ballet class at the age of three.[5] This was the beginning of her interest in performing. Strongly motivated by ballet, she never missed a class. In classical romantic pieces like Romeo and Juliet and The Sleeping Beauty, she always played the boys' roles due to being the tallest in the group and the absence of males in the class. Eventually she had a substantial female role as the fairy godmother in Cinderella; while warming up backstage, she broke her ankle, but proceeded to dance the role all the way through. Ultimately she decided against making a career of professional ballet because she had grown too tall and was unable to acquire perfect technique. She explained that she didn't have the ideal body type, lacking the requisite "beautifully constructed feet" of high arches, high insteps and a flexible ankle.[6] Also slowly realising ballet's propensity to be too all-consuming, and ultimately limiting, she moved on to other forms of dancing, acting and musical theatre.
She attended Washington-Lee High School, where she was on the cheerleading squad and acted in school theatrical productions. The summer before her senior year, she came to New York City to try acting on Broadway, and had some success. After she graduated, she returned and within a year became an understudy to actress Carol Haney in The Pajama Game; Haney broke her ankle, and Shirley replaced her. A few months after, with Haney still injured, film producer Hal B. Wallis saw Shirley's performance, and signed her to work for Paramount Pictures. She later sued Wallis over a contractual dispute, a suit that has been credited with ending the old-style studio star system of actor management.[7]
Career
She continued to star in major films, such as Steel Magnolias with Julia Roberts and other stars. In 2000 she made her feature-film directorial debut and starred in Bruno, which was released to video as The Dress Code. Other notable films in which MacLaine has starred include Sweet Charity (1968); Being There (1979) with Peter Sellers; Postcards from the Edge (1990) with Meryl Streep, playing a fictionalized version of Debbie Reynolds with a screenplay by Reynolds's daughter, Carrie Fisher; Used People (1992) with Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates; Guarding Tess (1994) with Nicolas Cage; Mrs. Winterbourne (1996), with Ricki Lake and Brendan Fraser; Rumor Has It… (2005) with Kevin Costner and Jennifer Aniston; In Her Shoes with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette; and Closing the Ring (2007) directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Christopher Plummer.
MacLaine has also appeared in numerous television projects including an autobiographical miniseries based upon the book Out on a Limb; The Salem Witch Trials; These Old Broads written by Carrie Fisher and co-starring Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, and Joan Collins; and Coco, a Lifetime production based on the life of Coco Chanel. She had a short-lived TV sitcom called Shirley's World. She appeared in the third and fourth seasons of the British drama Downton Abbey as Martha Levinson, mother to Cora, Countess of Grantham in 2012-2013.[11][12]
MacLaine was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts in December 2013.[13] She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1617 Vine Street and in 1999 was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival.[14] In 2011, the government of France made her a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur.
Personal life
MacLaine has claimed that, in a previous life in Atlantis, she was the brother to a 35,000 year old spirit named Ramtha channeled by American mystic teacher and author J. Z. Knight.[16][17]
She has a strong interest in spirituality and metaphysics, the central theme of some of her best-selling books including Out on a Limb and Dancing in the Light. She has undertaken such forms of spiritual exploration as walking the Way of St. James, working with Chris Griscom,[citation needed] and practicing Transcendental Meditation.[18]
Her well-known interest in New Age spirituality has also made its way into several of her films. In Albert Brooks's romantic comedy Defending Your Life (1991), the recently deceased lead characters, played by Brooks and Meryl Streep, are astonished to find MacLaine introducing their past lives in the "Past Lives Pavilion". In Postcards from the Edge (1990), MacLaine sings a version of "I'm Still Here", with customized lyrics created for her by composer Stephen Sondheim. One of the lyrics was changed to "I'm feeling transcendental – am I here?" In the made-for-television movie These Old Broads, MacLaine's character is a devotee of New Age spirituality.
She has an interest in UFOs, and gave numerous interviews on CNN, NBC and Fox news channels on the subject during 2007–2008. In her book Sage-ing While Age-ing (2007), she described alien encounters and witnessing of Washington DC UFO incidents in the 1950s.[19] In the April 2011 edition of the Oprah show MacLaine stated that she and her neighbor observed numerous UFO incidents at her New Mexico ranch for extended periods of time.[20]
MacLaine is godmother to the daughter of former Democratic U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich.[21]
Along with her brother, Warren Beatty, MacLaine used her celebrity status in instrumental roles as a fundraiser and organizer for George McGovern's campaign for president in 1972.[22][23][24] That year, she authored the book McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs.[22]
On February 7, 2013, Penguin Group USA published Sachi Parker's autobiography Lucky Me: My Life With – and Without – My Mom, Shirley MacLaine.[25] MacLaine has called the book "virtually all fiction".[26]
Filmography
TV work
- Shirley's World (1971–1972) and a 1977 one hour special
- Where Do We Go From Here? (1978); Winner of the Rose D'Or
- Out on a Limb (1987)
- Downton Abbey (2012-2013)
- NCIS (2012)
- Glee (2014); June Holloway
Bibliography
- MacLaine, Shirley (1970). Don't Fall Off the Mountain. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Limited. ISBN 978-0-393-07338-6.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1972). McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Limited. ISBN 978-0-393-05341-8.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1975). You Can Get There from Here. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Limited. ISBN 978-0-393-07489-5.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1983). Out on a Limb. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-553-05035-6.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1986). Dancing in the Light. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-76196-2.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1987). It's All in the Playing. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-05217-6.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1990). Going Within: A Guide to Inner Transformation. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 978-055-328-3310.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1991). Dance While You Can. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-07607-3.
- MacLaine, Shirley (1995). My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-09717-7.
- MacLaine, Shirley (2000). The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit. New York: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-7434-0072-5. (Published in Europe as: MacLaine, Shirley (2001). The Camino: A Pilgrimage of Courage. London: Pocket Books. ISBN 0-7434-0921-3.)
- MacLaine, Shirley (2003). Out on a Leash: Exploring the Nature of Reality and Love. New York: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-7434-8506-7.
- MacLaine, Shirley (2007). Sage-ing While Age-ing. New York: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4165-5041-9.
- MacLaine, Shirley (2011). I'm Over All That: And Other Confessions. New York: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4516-0729-1.
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