Background

Shirley MacLean Beaty was born on April 24, 1934, in Richmond, Virginia; the daughter of Ira Owens Beaty, a professor of psychology, public school administrator, and real estate agent, and Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), a drama teacher. MacLaine's younger brother, Warren Beatty, is the actor, writer, and director.

While MacLaine was still a child, Ira Beaty moved his family from Richmond to Norfolk, and then to Arlington and Waverly, then back to Arlington.

Education

MacLaine enrolled in ballet class at the Washington School of Ballet at the age of three. This was the beginning of her interest in performing. Ultimately she decided against making a career of professional ballet because she had grown too tall and was unable to acquire perfect technique.

Shirley 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 went to New York City to try acting on Broadway, and had some success.

Career

After graduating from high school, MacLaine moved to New York City, where she worked as a dancer and model. Around this time she changed her name to Shirley MacLaine. In 1954 she was hired as a chorus girl and understudy to the second lead, Carol Haney, in the hit Broadway musical The Pajama Game. When Haney broke her ankle, MacLaine took over the role and was "discovered" by film producer Hal Wallis, who put her under contract.

MacLaine made her movie debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry (1955). Her unique sexy tomboyish looks and her ability to combine worldly experience with an offbeat innocence caused her to be frequently cast as a good-hearted hooker or waif - for example, in such films as Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running (1958), an adaptation of a James Jones novel, and Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960) and Irma la Douce (1963), romantic comedies that also starred Jack Lemmon. Her performances in those films earned MacLaine Academy Award nominations. In 1969 she starred in Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity, portraying a taxi dancer who remains optimistic despite a series of disappointments.

Rarely able to exercise her considerable dancing talent on film, MacLaine often appeared on television variety specials, winning several Emmy Awards, and in 1976 and 1984 she returned to Broadway in, respectively, A Gypsy in My Soul and Shirley MacLaine on Broadway. Her other notable TV credits included the British drama series Downton Abbey.

In 1970 MacLaine published Don’t Fall off the Mountain, which turned out to be the first in a series of best-selling memoirs describing not only her life in movies and her relationships (including that with her brother) but also her search for spiritual fulfillment. In 1987 she co-wrote, produced, directed, and starred in a television adaptation of one of her autobiographies, Out on a Limb, which had been published in 1983. She also directed The Other Half of the Sky (1976), which received an Oscar nomination for best documentary; it was about life in China.

As MacLaine aged, her characters grew more cantankerous, and she often played a spirited, sharp-tongued, frustrated, slightly over-the-top woman. Rather than reduce these characters to a cliché, however, MacLaine managed to humanize them and make them believable. She was cast as a former ballerina questioning her decision to give up her career for her family in The Turning Point (1977), for which she received her fourth Oscar nomination for best actress, and she finally won the award for her portrayal of a strong-willed compulsive mother in Terms of Endearment (1983). She later played grumpy Ouiser Boudreaux in Steel Magnolias (1989), a feisty former first lady in Guarding Tess (1994), and a wealthy woman surprised by her daughter-in-law’s mistaken identity in Mrs. Winterbourne (1996). In 2000 MacLaine directed her only feature film, Bruno (also released as The Dress Code), about a young boy struggling to express himself.

MacLaine continued to be a sought-after actress into the early 21st century. In 2005 she appeared in In Her Shoes, portraying a grandmother who helps her granddaughters patch up their differences, and Rumor Has It, a comedy about the family that was the inspiration for Charles Webb’s novel The Graduate (1963). She later starred in Bernie (2011), a dark comedy based on the true story of a popular funeral director who killed a wealthy widow, and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013). In Wild Oats (2016) MacLaine was cast as a widow who, after mistakenly receiving a life insurance check for $5 million, goes to the Canary Islands with her best friend (played by Jessica Lange). The film underwent numerous production delays because of financial difficulties, and MacLaine chronicled the troubled shoot in the book Above the Line: My Wild Oats Adventure (2016).

Achievements

• 

  Shirley MacLaine’s distinguished career constitutes a string of spunky portrayals that have passed the test of time and a veritable list of collaborations with the big guns of Hollywood. She has appeared in more than 60 films (and counting), penned 12 books, and directed documentaries and an indie drama.
  
  MacLaine was the recipient of numerous honours. An Academy Award winner, MacLaine received the 40th AFI Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 2012, and received the Kennedy Center Honors for her lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts in 2013.
  
  She twice won the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress, for Ask Any Girl (1959), and The Apartment (1960); and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy-Variety or Music Special for the 1976 TV special, Gypsy In My Soul. She has also won five competitive Golden Globe Awards, and received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 1998 ceremony. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1617 Vine Street and in 1999 was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival, and her likeness has been sculpted in wax for Madame Tussauds Las Vegas.
  
  In 2011, the government of France made her a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur. In 2019 she won the Movies For Grown Ups with AARP the Magazine's Life Time Achievement Award.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit 2000
  • Out on a Limb 2011
  • Sage-ing While Age-ing 2007
  • Going Within: A Guide for Inner Transformation 2010
  • What If . . .: A Lifetime of Questions, Speculations, Reasonable Guesses, and a Few Things I Know for Sure 2013

• movie

  • Elsa & Fred 2014
  • The Last Word 2014
  • Terms of Endearment 1983
  • Sweet Charity 1969
  • All In A Night's Work 1961
  • Around the World in 80 Days 1956
  • These Old Broads 2009
  • The Children's Hour 1961
  • Woman Times Seven 1967
  • Mrs. Winterbourne 1967
  • Madame Sousatzka 1988
  • What A Way To Go 1964
  • Steel Magnolias 1989
  • Wild Oats 2016
  • Guarding Tess 1994
  • Postcards From The Edge 1944
  • The Turning Point 1977
  • Used People 1992
  • Gambit 2010
  • Coco Chanel 2015
  • Carolina 2005

Religion

Shirley's parents raised her as Baptist. Currently, she is known for her New Age beliefs, and has an interest in spirituality, reincarnation, and metaphysics - the central themes of some of her best-selling books, including Out on a Limb and Dancing in the Light. She has undertaken such forms of spiritual exploration as walking the Way of St. James, working with Chris Griscom, and practicing Transcendental Meditation.

Politics

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.

Views

Quotations: "I want women to be liberated and still be able to have a nice ass and shake it."

"The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends."

"I don't need anyone to rectify my existence. The most profound relationship we will ever have is the one with ourselves."

"I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I've written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part."

"It's useless to hold a person to anything he says while he's in love, drunk, or running for office."

"The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused."

"Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power."

"I've made so many movies playing a hooker that they don't pay me in the regular way anymore. They leave it on the dresser.

Someday perhaps change will occur when times are ready for it instead of always when it is too late. Someday change will be accepted as life itself."

Personality

Shirley MacLaine is the philanthropist and humanitarian who is deeply concerned about the state of the world, for which she has great compassion and idealism. She has a utopian personality, and will spend her life trying to realize some aspect of her utopian dream, sacrificing money, time, and energy for a better world.

Quotes from others about the person

• Don Siegel: "It's hard to feel any great warmth to her. She's too unfeminine, and has too much balls. She's very, very hard.

Interests

• Politicians

  George McGovern

Connections

MacLaine was married to businessman Steve Parker from 1954 until their divorce in 1982; they have a daughter, Sachi. In April 2011, while promoting her new book, I'm Over All That, she revealed to Oprah Winfrey that she had had an open relationship with her husband. MacLaine also told Winfrey that she often fell for the leading men she worked with, with the exceptions of Jack Lemmon (The Apartment) and Jack Nicholson (Terms of Endearment).

Father:

Ira Owens Beatty

Mother:

Kathlyn Corinne MacLean

Spouse:

Steve Parker

(February 6, 1922 - May 13, 2001, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States)

Daughter:

Sachi Parker

(born September 1, 1956)

Sachi Parker is an American actress who has numerous film and television credits.

Brother:

Henry Beatty

(né Beaty; born March 30, 1937)

Warren Beatty is an American actor and filmmaker. He has been nominated for fourteen Academy Awards – four for Best Actor, four for Best Picture, two for Best Director, three for Original Screenplay, and one for Adapted Screenplay – winning Best Director for Reds (1981).

References

• Lucky Me: My Life With - and Without - My Mom, Shirley MacLaine
  2013
• Shirley MacLaine on Broadway
  1984
• American Legends: The Life of Shirley MacLaine
  2015